Pillars of Fire
by tripodion
Summary: Sherlock returns to London, to 221B, but he returns alone. With no body, he's left wondering, but with no John, he's left alone. He's heard that soldiers coming back from war have a hard time readjusting. He had no idea it hurt this much. And on top of it all, John's former employers are about to come calling. Sequel to 'Eosophobia'.
1. ashes

"If you're losing your soul and you know it, then you've still got a soul left to lose."

- Charles Bukowski

* * *

London is colder this time of year.

Sherlock Holmes doesn't feel it like he used to, when it gnawed at his bones and drove him inside to warmer places. Not much feels warm anymore.

Mrs Hudson slaps him when she opens the door. He deserves that. He deserves many things.

She asks where John is.

He swallows the urge to collapse like a body without a skeleton.

He tells her he doesn't know.

"Oh, that's alright." She coos, patting his hair like he's the son she never had. "He does this a lot. Disappear for days, weeks even, and then come back like nothing happened. But he pays the rent, so it's not my lot to ask too many prying questions. I know how you both prize your privacy. Oh, he'll be so happy to see you Sherlock, he's not been himself without you. I can tell he misses you—"

She ushered him inside like he hadn't just risen from the dead after nearly four years and sat him down on her sofa while she made them some tea. But he was gone when she returned with the tray.

The door to 221B had been left open.

Sherlock stood in the middle of the sitting room.

He is home.

* * *

The flat is almost as he left it.

A newer model television that he can tell John rarely watched sits in the place of their old one. The kitchen table is a little cleaner—no, it's new too?—no, it's just bare. He stares at it in fascination. _That's_ what it looked like underneath all his experiments? If he had known that, he'd have gotten a newer one on the spot. Burn marks pocket it like scars, stains and acid spills and god knows what lining its surface.

"I had all your equipment boxed up for you, dear." Mrs Hudson says from behind him. "They're in your room if you want to get them out. I'm sure John won't mind. They've been waiting for you, after all."

She bustles around the room for a moment before disappearing back downstairs, saying her offer of tea still stands and to get it before its cold. At the bottom of the stairs she yells up something about being careful when going into John's room, but he doesn't hear her.

The skull stares at him from the mantle.

John—or presumably Mrs Hudson—had cleaned away all of his things, yet the skull had stayed. Why?

To remind him of what he'd lost? A memento mori? A souvenir?

He'd never know. John wasn't around to ask.

Is that what John's looks like now? What do burned skeletons even look like, for that matter? The skull is made of calcium, yes, but does it burn away?

He closed his eyes.

The clinical portion of his mind, however encompassing it was, chose to announce itself at the worst possible times.

He sits in John's chair. It still smells of him. It makes something in his stomach hurt. It sends tendrils of something like pain curling through him.

There are a pile of books beside him. To think that he once thought that they were tedious things. John had touched them once. They were _invaluable_ now. War novels, medical dictionary—

A journal?

No.

Too good to be true.

Yes.

True.

A journal. John's journal. A piece of him, something that Sherlock could hold to, something that means that he had existed when all others forgot him.

He opens it to the front page.

_CAP. JOHN H. WATSON_

_FIFTH NORTHUMBERLAND FUSILIERS_

_P 74214183_

A war journal, then.

Some deity had smiled upon him today, someone had known that Sherlock ached over never being able to ask John so many things—_who did you kill, how, what was the army like, did you kill anyone there, does it make it easier, how do you properly iron a shirt, why did you leave the skull out, what do I do if I want to bury you but there's no body (I'd want to talk to you), why did you leave when you said you wouldn't_—and now, here in his hands, is John's record of his time in the army.

It starts right after his deployment, after he'd invaded.

John's writing begins in his careful lettering, all uppercase. All letters of equal importance.

It's boring at first, and Sherlock feels that he can admit that to himself. Medical supply records, grid maps of the territory, lists lists lists of what he ate, who he doctored, what supplies he'd need to order in…John's story wasn't his story at all, it was coldly clinical, like he was an observer at a crime scene, noting everything but seeing nothing. Had he always been a soldier stuck in a hospital or was it a doctor stuck on a battlefield? Sherlock couldn't tell, and so the enigma of John Watson escaped him once more.

John was working at a field hospital, that much was clear. But he hadn't seen much action. He had been—what was the term—benched? Deemed unfit, not ready for the real game?

And then it began. Sometime in March, near the end of his second tour, his story started. On his last mundane entry, he talked of needing more swabs and antiseptic and then mentioned that he would see action soon since the numbers were running a little low due to those leaving at the end of their tour.

His first day was filled with sand and heat and uneventful routine.

His second day was much more interesting.

_A lot of people don't remember their first words. But I do._

بچه

_Bac-hei._

His Arabic was written beautifully, such a dark calligraphy. The writing lilted off. John had left to do something else. It returned:

_(bačče)_

He had found a dictionary.

_My first words. Or my first Pashto words, rather. Basic training taught me some standards of course, the universal words that hardly help at all when you're being shot at or you're tying someone back together like a ragdoll that you've torn apart. They don't help when you have a child cradled in your arms then laid under your hands and they're open beneath you like someone's twisted joke of reminding you of that frog you dissected in fifth form biology. They don't help when that child dies muttering words you don't know because all you learned where the words that didn't matter._

John's writing became harder. He had born down his pen in impotent anger.

_They don't help when the child's mother runs past you and collapses at her son's side and screams 'ya bachei, ya bachei' over and over ag__ain__. _كرار كرار خبرې كوه _, that's not going to help me; "please talk slower, I can't understand the words that you're screaming as you try to cradle your son without getting wrist deep in his intestinal tract"._

_These words, they don't help at all._

John. John, what did you see? What happened? A child was blown apart, his mother grieved for him, but there was something else, you saw something, something that made you forget about lists for once, something you couldn't internalise…

Sherlock continues reading.

_What do you do when you have nothing to bury? The mother had another child, a girl from the looks of it, although you can't be sure when she was splattered across the walls. So now there is a mother with two children dead, and only one that she can put in the ground and another she has to clean off the walls._

Oh. It's the beginning of disillusionment, born out of boring menial tasks and flourishing in war.

Naturally John, as compassionate as he was, would feel for this woman. Naturally, he would start to wonder if it was all really worth it. If her sacrifice made truly him feel safer. His frustration at being left out initially was further aggravated by pointless bloodshed.

John liked to tell stories. That much was clear from his blog.

He talks about the Pech River, something he mentioned to Sherlock once. He talks about stitching people back together and taking them apart and closing their eyes and raising the sheet. He talks about playing in an Asadabad market with a child whose life he'd saved. He talks about the sounds the Afghani women make when they laugh and when they cry, about the snowy white mountains in the distance and the dark valleys that smell of death and old congealing blood.

This is the man that Sherlock had wanted to see, what he'd only gotten glimpses of in Bruges and Prague and Sarajevo.

John, the soldier laid bare, awed by an exotic setting and terrified by its brutality.

When he looks back up, the sun is setting.

He is hungry.

Hungry for food in the general sense, but that's not anything new. No, he's hungry for _more_. He wants to know more of John, he wants there to be more and there is some left, but it's not going to last long. Not at the rate he's consuming it. He feels like he did when he was staring into that box Mary gave him, when he wanted there to be more gifts from John and yet there was nothing else.

There is a noise from upstairs, a scrape of something on the wood floors. Not something falling, something—

Moving.

He jumps to his feet.

_John, John, I knew it, I knew you were alive, I knew you were smarter than that, you great idiot—_

He bounds up the stairs. John's last note to him flutters against his chest.

_PS – Forgive me for the state of 221B, and whatever surprises you may find. People do strange things when they're lonely and in love._

He flings the door open and it bangs against the wall.

"John?" A smile comes to his face. "John, I—"

The room is empty. Dust is starting to gather on the furniture.

A great black tervuren sits in front of him, looking more like a wolf than a dog. It wags its tail, tongue lolling happily at the prospect of a new friend.

Sherlock collapses against the door.

_John is not here._

The dog licks at his hand.

_John is not here._

The dog lays beside him, head in his lap.

_John is not here._

Sherlock buries his head in his hands.

Surrounded by all of John Watson's belongings, of all the things that were once his and never will be again, Sherlock takes in a deep shaking breath.

Sherlock Holmes begins to cry.

* * *

**On that note, welcome back everyone!**


	2. ghosts

"Of thunder of spring over distant mountains

He who was living is now dead

We who were living are now dying

With a little patience"

The Wasteland, V - T.S. Eliot

* * *

When Sherlock looks at his hands, he sees decaying flesh, rotting flaps of skin and flayed black muscle dripping over his bare bones. He sees the body that's not there.

When he looks at himself, he sees his ghost.

He is a voyeur in the world. Not quite a part of it, not quite apart from it. He stays in the flat, but he doesn't want to be there, constantly sickened by everything he sees because everything is John's, everything reeks of him and his bleeding heart and Sherlock can't stand it, can't quite reckon it with the fact that John will never pick up one of his medical books again to look up whatever particular wound Sherlock had acquired or that he'll never hear the slow clicking of John's keyboard as he types in his infuriatingly slow manner. He'll never hold John's face in his hands or wrap his arms around him or watch his eyes when he says that he loves him.

When he wakes, he wakes alone. In the space between sleeping and sentience, when his mind shakes off his body's stagnancy, he can imagine that John is there, sleeping beside him. He can pretend that the wadded up duvet that he's clutching like a drowning man would a life raft is something else, something alive and warm and familiar. Something that will never leave.

But then he opens his eyes and he sees eiderdown instead of pale blonde hair. He turns away, into another hour of sleep, if only because it means postponing reality a little while longer.

He wishes he dreamed more. Then he might dream of John. But all he has now are memories.

He starts to think that it might have been fine, it might have been bearable even, if he had never run into John in Bruges. If they had stayed in their own carefully synthetic lives, working towards a future they wanted in a reality that was trying to stop them. If John had never seen him in Bruges, he would never have stayed, he would have moved on, but Sherlock had to prove he was clever, that he was smarter than whatever he was facing, and its price had been larger than he could pay. If John had never seen him Sherlock might have had someone to come back to and that is what hurts the most.

The emptiness.

One day he wakes up to a mouthful of fur from that damned dog. Not exactly what he wanted. He wants John, he wants to feel warm skin under his fingers and listen to John's heart beating until he wakes up. He does not want this mongrel licking him awake.

He kicks the dog out of his bed and it circles itself before settling down on the floor. He hasn't even named it yet. He wonders what John called it. He hopes it wasn't eponymous; two Sherlocks in one flat would be a nightmare.

He shuts his eyes. As he breathes out an exhale, he pretends it's his last. That maybe he can trick his body into dying on its own so his mind will be quiet for once, the good kind of quiet that feels like rainy nights reading while John writes, not the terrible high silence that burned through his mind like he was flat-lining as that garage burst into flame.

Dying of heartbreak is improbable, but not impossible. He's looked into it. It's colloquially called the Widow's Illness (from what John mentioned once at least). Acute stress cardiomyopathy, the classic symptoms of cardiac arrest, only it's psychological, not physiological; you can be legally dead of a heart attack and your heart is still working as fine as it ever did. John had tried explaining to Sherlock how devastating losing the one you loved most was, but neither really knew what that meant, how it felt, and now Sherlock was left to experience it alone.

"You know you could have saved me."

His eyes fly open and he turns on his side.

John lies beside him on the bed, arm curled under his head like he's been there forever, just waiting.

"John…"

Sherlock shuts his eyes.

This is a ghost.

No.

This is his subconscious. His sadism coming out to play.

"You could have saved me, Sherlock." John says again, his voice soft like Sherlock remembers.

"I know." He answers quietly.

"Why? Why didn't you?"

"Mary—Anthea—she tried to stop me." Sherlock answers, opening his eyes to gaze at John, who looks just as real as he ever did. "She slowed me down. John, you have to know, you have to believe me, if I'd known what was going to happen—"

"Wasn't I worth it?" John asks, and his hoarse whisper sounds gutted, utterly heartbroken. Disappointed.

Sherlock swallows harshly. "Of course you were."

"You know," John murmurs. "Sometimes I wondered if you actually loved me, or you just thought you did."

"_You know, sometimes I think I'll leave you while you sleep, so you wake up alone."_

"No…"

Not-John has taken his place again, pale face full of swirling black veins back like it never left, like ink spilled onto marble, the dark tar-like blood shining at him again through a wicked smile.

"Don't go away, John, you can't go away—"

_John's arms wrap around him and Sherlock's hands close around his face as John stares at him with those eyes that look at him like he can do no wrong._

Not-John looks at him through dark eyes the colour of open water. He wraps his hands around Sherlock's wrists before prying them from his shirt.

"I thought you loved me. I thought you cared, Sherlock."

"I _do_." Sherlock chokes.

The dog lifts its head off the floor to watch the crazy man suffer.

"Then _why_," Not-John asks, his voice breaking. "Why did you leave me alone?"

"I would have followed you. Into the fire." He tries to lay his head against John's, tries to dig his fingers in his shirt, but of course there's nothing there for him to touch. "I would have followed you anywhere, I would have…would have…"

"This hurt, this feeling like you could have done more that aches in your bones, it will never leave you." Not-John murmurs, his fingers gently touching Sherlock's face. "Because, deep down, you know you could have saved me, Sherlock Holmes."

His words are soft, but they're sharp enough to draw blood.

"It's all my fault, isn't it?" Sherlock asks softly.

Not-John stares back at him.

* * *

It takes nearly two months before he caves.

Mycroft, upon being alerted by his reconnaissance team, finds the flat empty. He's almost impressed by how long Sherlock has lasted.

The bathroom door is shut, locked, but light spills from underneath it.

"Sherlock?" He calls softly, his words contrasting the sharp but effective jab he makes at the door with his umbrella, snapping it away from the lock.

Sherlock is sitting in the middle of the bathtub under a cascade of steaming water, naked but for an unbuttoned purple shirt.

A broken syringe is lying in the rubbish bin.

Mycroft shuts his eyes. He had been warned of such activities, but there's a distance about being told of destruction that seems so small upon seeing it first-hand.

Sherlock doesn't look high or inebriated.

He looks broken.

His chin is buried in his crossed arms, leaving his dark hair to cling to his face as water streams over it. Dirt sluices off his bare feet, scrunched against the edge of the tub. His eyes are blank, a thousand miles away.

If it wasn't for the slow rise of his chest, he wouldn't be moving and that thought is what terrifies Mycroft more than anything else in this world.

"Sherlock." Mycroft murmurs again, and it is the sound of disappointment, a quiet acknowledgment of a promise that had been thrown to the floor one too many times before it shattered.

"Has it—" Sherlock's voice cracks and he swallows, water dripping over his mouth. "Has it occurred to you that this is something you can't fix? With all your bureaucratic clout or your precious connections? That maybe this damage is…irreparable?"

"Nothing is irreparable."

Sherlock lifts his head and lets it fall against the tiled edges of the tub. He smiles a grin that's almost too nihilistic for Mycroft's liking as he tilts his face back to catch the drops so they can trickle down his parched throat.

"Can you set John Watson back together again Mycroft? Can you do that? Bind his bones together and remould his muscles and make him breathe again? You can fix him?"

Mycroft stares down at his little brother, high as a kite and nearing the emotional meltdown they both knew was coming. It was only a matter of time.

"How much did you take, Sherlock?"

"Enough."

"Sherlock. How much?"

"Less…less than a fatal dose." Sherlock slurs. "But my tolerance made that a little difficult. Wouldn't want to…make this too easy for you."

"You're dealing in vagaries, brother mine."

Sherlock smiles with the dazed madness of insobriety.

"No…no, no, I'm—I'm going to feel like this forever. I saw his ghost today, you know. He told me it was...was my fault..."

"Sherlock, please, be logical—"

Sherlock suddenly lashes out, striking his fist against the wall.

"I've been logical! I've been clever and smart and cold all of my life and was has it gotten me? A body that I can't bury…I can't even retire with an urn of ashes to put on my mantle."

Mycroft almost rolls his eyes.

"You're not _retiring_, Sherlock, as good as your little veil of melodrama might make that sound."

"No," Sherlock sighs, fumbling with the cuff of his shirt. "No, I'm done, I think."

"Done?" Mycroft asks disbelievingly. "Investigating is your life. You'll never be done."

"My life." Sherlock grins hollowly as he shuts his eyes. "My life is in a godforsaken smoking pile of ash and dirt in Sarajevo."

"Sherlock," Mycroft begins soberly. "What would he say if he saw you like this?"

Sherlock chuckles lowly. "It's not like he can."

It takes too long for Mycroft to answer and Sherlock opens his eyes.

"What aren't you telling me Mycroft?"

"Sherlock—"

"He escaped, didn't he?" Sherlock says as he narrows his eyes. "He asked you to help him like I did, and you acquiesced, didn't you?"

"Sherlock—"

"I _knew_ it!" Sherlock cries, standing on shaking legs as he grasps for the side of the tub. "I knew John had a back-up plan! He's always so prepared, but I must say this is a masterstroke, even by my standards—" Sherlock whips a towel off the rack and wraps it around his waist before turning to Mycroft, his eyes bright. "Where is he then? Where have you sent him?"

"Sherlock." Mycroft says solemnly, and it's all Sherlock needs to hear.

In that one terrible moment his mind returns to him as it sobers itself with the knowledge that he's gotten his hopes up. He's let his faith in John get the better of him, again. Shame wells up in him, flashing as quick as anger and feeling as cold as grief.

He blinks, lets his gaze drop to the wet tile of the floor. Mycroft chooses to see the wetness in his eyes as bathwater.

"Has it caught up to you then?" Mycroft asks as Sherlock trails past him into his dark bedroom.

"What, that he's never coming back? Only every second since it's happened." Sherlock bites, collapsing onto his bed.

"No, has it caught up with you that he sacrificed his life for yours without a safety net, without looking down, because you meant everything to him. That maybe there were greater things than himself, things that seemed better to him than losing you. You owe the sacrifices of a man like that a far better tribute than a life like this."

"He was all I had." Sherlock murmurs as he runs his hands through his hair.

"No, he wasn't. He may have meant the most to you, but you are never alone, Sherlock. Not really. Not when you have your landlady or Detective Inspector Lestrade or Miss Hooper or Mummy or even myself. You are only alone because you've imposed an exile on yourself for something that wasn't your fault. Your friends still care for you, even if you ignore their existence. London still needs you. The death of John Watson does not mean that the world has stopped turning."

"Mine has." Sherlock says quietly as he looks up, and Mycroft can see years of dependency crumbling in his eyes.

"Melodrama was never your strong point, brother dear. You'd never shown or felt strong affection for anyone, so, naturally, when John came along you mistook dependency for love..."

"No," Sherlock shakes his head. "No, I loved him, Mycroft. I did—I do. There will never be anyone else."

"Ever?"

_If you go, I go._

Sherlock shuts his eyes.

"Ever."

Mycroft is silent for a moment.

"If I remember correctly, you once thought yourself incapable of love. Do you still think so now?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Sherlock asks acerbically.

"Sherlock…when you were with John in Bruges and then on your traipse around Europe—on my dime, I'd like to add, and my thanks to you for that—were you ever something…more? Did he know of your feelings?"

"We were. He did."

Mycroft inhales slowly through his nose.

"Was this relationship…physical?"

"Irene Adler's moniker for me wouldn't be apropos anymore, if that's what you're wondering."

An astonishing feeling of gratitude wells up in the heart of Mycroft Holmes at the thought that someone managed to get close enough to his brother to warrant that statement, but it is soon drowned in a cold remorse that this someone is now dead.

"I'm never going to get past this." Sherlock mutters quietly and Mycroft fears that he can take him at his word.

"These feelings, they fade with time."

"I don't want to forget him." Sherlock says, and his eyes are growing red and wet. "I can't, Mycroft. I can't."

"You won't." Mycroft says reassuringly as he moves to leave the room. He has no intention of actually evacuating the premises though, merely to wander around the parlour or read for a bit. He is not leaving Sherlock alone tonight.

"How…" Sherlock whispers. "How do you know?"

He stops, head dropping to stare at the floor.

"Because once, in my younger days, I was in the same place you are. And I haven't forgotten."

Sherlock is quiet for a moment and Mycroft assumes he has nothing more to say, but he speaks just as Mycroft crosses the threshold.

"Mycroft?"

He pauses and turns towards Sherlock.

"Don't expect me to pray."

A grim smile flashes across his face.

"I never would, brother dear. That would be a very grave red flag."


	3. the unfair loveliness

"An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience."

James Baldwin

* * *

He has no name, no proper identification, no defining characteristics at all. His past is unknown and his present is most likely non-too enjoyable. She can tell he is handsome under all those bandages, or used to be. She's not sure how bad the damage is.

He arrived at almost four in the morning—further supporting her husband's long standing claim that nothing good happened after midnight—in a fury of movement and excitement in the otherwise dead hours of the morning.

The doors had burst open and she was singled out from the gaggle of nurses at the desk to help with the blood and fluid transfusions to stabilise him after the oxygen tubing had been applied to help ease his breathing. His chest was bare so the wound might be accessed, almost two hands wide and a blood slick, charred whiteness underneath the bits of shirt that had melted to his skin. She knew without consulting with the doctors that skin grafts weren't only necessary but urgent as well.

She pulls the head doctor aside outside his room.

"Hoće li živjeti?"

_Will he live?_

"Nije dobro."

_Not well._

She tries not to think about his future as she attempts to guarantee that he will even have one, trying to ward off the hypophosphatemia that is all too possible to occur as she tapes the IV carrying the vital phosphates he needs to the inside of his arm.

The head doctor watches as she works.

"Vi zanima previše, Cila." He says softly.

_You care too much, Cila._

"Netko mora." She responds quietly, her voice carrying through the silent room.

_Someone has to._

"Ne možete tugovati svima."

_You can't grieve for everyone._

"Tko je rekao da sam ga žalosti?"

_Who said I was grieving?_

She moves to grab something from her cart, but his hand stops her, wrapping gently around her wrist as his fingers graze hers.

"Nitko ne treba reći."

_No one needs to say it._

He looks at her for a moment before leaning forward and kissing her softly, his lips warm despite the coldness of the room.

"Vidimo se kod kuće."

_See you at home_.

She watches as he leaves the room.

They make love that night, after she makes her last rounds in the emergency ward and she comes home soft and vulnerable, not quite used to the disheartening atmosphere of caring for critical patients. He twines his fingers with hers so their palms touch, and she starts to cry from the beauty of it all; cries for the burned man, cries for the boy in the coma ward whose twin visits every day, cries because her husband delivered a child today when they know he'll never deliver theirs, cries because he loves her.

Tears for the unfair loveliness of their lives.

In a year's time, she will leave him before he can leave her.

In a month's time, the burned man will tell her his real name and she will know that she loves him like the heroine does in stories, unconditional and all-consuming and it is dangerous and full and bright. She loves him because his name is his story is his soul and it is all too perfect to be real but he is.

In a week, she will see his face and sigh in relief because the burn on his side didn't extend past his neck and he is just as beautiful as she imagined him to be.

* * *

The darkened flat is silent, rain tapping against the windows in the cold grey light.

Mycroft has disappeared. Most suspicious, considering he is tottering on the edge of becoming a suicide case.

He has Sherlock on house arrest, which is fine enough considering he is retired and wouldn't leave even if Lestrade burst in with a case of mass serial killer using an icicle as his weapon of choice with an army of children as a human shield.

He composes a sonata on his violin. He imagines he'd have played it at John's funeral. If he'd had one.

Mrs Hudson comes up with tea and biscuits. Her pot is appalling compared to John's, but Sherlock drinks it because it means she will not disturb him for the rest of the day trying to get him to eat.

John's war journal sits on the mantle, propped up against the skull. Sherlock had read its last entry, dated just after John returned to London with his injury, his invalidation letter wedged in the back pages, and then he went out and bought enough heroin to keep him high as a kite for the rest of the weekend because it meant he'd think about how odd it was that air was now visible instead of what John's burned body looked like. He hadn't planned on Mycroft's little visit, but he supposes he should have. That was big brother for you. Always watching.

The dog is watching him. It doesn't bother him much anymore like it used to. He's taken to calling it various names ranging from Crick to Rosebery to mongrel to you to heyyou to getoutofmywayyougreatwasteof space before he realises that a week has passed where he's been calling it Franklin and the name seems to stick after that.

He was never much of a dog person—or an anything person for that matter—but Franklin was surprisingly low-maintenance for a dog. He never pestered Sherlock when he was working or attempting to rather as he cycled through various activities to keep his mind occupied and away from the dark space labelled 'John' in big ugly letters it doesn't deserve.

Once, he'd lain in John's arms and imagined what it would feel like to have him underneath his body, head thrown back against the pillows as Sherlock moved inside him. He tries to touch himself one night, imagining that John is alive and solid under his hands, wrapped around him as Sherlock himself had once been, but his mind fills with the image of John's burned body beneath him, charred bones folded around his shoulders as he thrusts inside waxy cold flesh, stiff and unresponsive to his touch. His cock slips from his hand with a wet sound and he stumbles from his bed, dropping to his knees in front of the toilet as he becomes violently sick. His hands shake. He needs to go out, to find something that will make his mind float away, make it stop thinking these awful things.

He shrugs on his robe and pairs it with shoes that are too fancy and out of place before reaching into the hollowed earphones of the cow skull, hand grabbing at the wad of cash that should be there instead of the emptiness he finds.

"Do you really think I wouldn't search the flat, brother dear?" A voice says from the stairway and Sherlock shuts his eyes as his teeth grind together.

"I'm never going to stop, Mycroft."

"Neither will I." Mycroft answers, stepping into the room. "Persistence is an annoying trait of the Holmes' family, I'm afraid."

"I want him back." Sherlock murmurs into the silence of the late night, running his hands through his hair.

"I know you do. I've come to grant you that."

Sherlock freezes, heart hammering as he stares into the dark street.

"You found him?"

"I did."

"He's—he's alive?"

"He's here, Sherlock." Mycroft says solemnly and Sherlock whirls around, a smile growing on his face, and he feels so _bright_ in that moment, so untouchable, nothing could ever come between Holmes and Watson, nothing could take John from him, he could _breathe_ again, the world took its fist off from around his neck, John, John _John _—

He looks down to the urn in Mycroft's hands.

And he _knows_. He just knows. John will never come home because he is home, home in that little silver urn in a place that suddenly feels like not much of a home at all.

He feels his legs give out from under him as he collapses to the floor. Franklin whines and comes to sit beside him.

Mycroft stays. He lifts Sherlock's unconscious form to the sofa, tucks him under a blanket their grandmother made, and watches over him the rest of the night.

Anthea texts him the schedule for the day.

He tells her he's taking sick leave.

She replies with: _Finally_.

* * *

Two mornings later, Mycroft goes out to get breakfast from Speedy's. That is his first mistake.

He climbs the stairs, a coffee in one hand and a bag of sandwiches in the other. His day hasn't properly started, as his phone hasn't rung yet with the updates he's requested Mary to send to him; briefly, he wonders if she misses John, but nothing will come close to the eclipse that Sherlock has cast over the memoriam of the good doctor.

He enters the parlour room and suddenly realises precisely why his phone hasn't rung.

Because it's in Sherlock's hand.

He shuts his eyes. It is a pronounced and terrible moment when one realises how vastly their mistake stretches, as if they could reach into that cold spot inside themselves and rewind time so this horrible moment ceases to happen.

Sherlock hasn't moved, although he knows Mycroft has returned. He strides past the statue of his brother and sets the bag and coffee on the kitchen table. He doesn't want Sherlock to upend them in the fit of rage he knows is coming, although they most likely will become casualties anyways.

He turns and blocks the punch suddenly flying at his face. Sherlock whirls on him again, tossing the phone at him.

Sherlock's chest is heaving as if he's run a marathon and Mycroft considers himself lucky that nothing heavier was within arm's distance.

He opens his mouth as if to say something, but his anger seems to be beyond words.

"You will fly me there _tonight_." He snarls before storming past Mycroft and slamming his bedroom door.

Mycroft looks down at his phone.

It's a text from Mary. The one he's been expecting.

_PATIENT NUMBER: 19-5-2-1-13-15-18_

_LOCATION: Kosevo Hospital, Klinicki Centar Univerziteta, Bolnicka 25 Sarajevo 71000_

_PATIENT IS AWAKE, LUCID & TALKING._

_SAYS HIS NAME IS JOHN WATSON._


	4. death, living

Mycroft Holmes, contrary to his brother's long-standing denial, is not stupid.

This is why, when Sherlock climbs into the idling towncar—a rare occasion, as he himself called for it instead of Mycroft—and Mycroft can feel the wordless cold anger radiating off of his brother, he knows the precise gravity of his error.

This is why, when Mycroft gets a call from a frantic Mrs Hudson about the massive destruction inside of 221B—"Clothes out of the dressers, holes in the walls, plates smashed, it's an awful mess, really...is Sherlock alright?"—he knows why. And, furthermore, this is why he is not at all surprised, not in the least, which leads to Mrs Hudson opening the door to a cleaning crew a half-hour later by means of apology. He questions Sherlock, but he is silent on the matter and does nothing more than shift from angry glares at Mycroft to angrily staring out the window. Mycroft knows this is no mere temper tantrum. It's far more serious.

However much power he gleans from his minor position in the British government, it unfortunately does not extend to airport security. Sherlock stands silently beside him in the queue, dutifully shedding his coat and shoes and placing them beside his carry-on in the plastic tray. Mycroft pretends not to notice that his eyes never leave the bag as it passes through the scanners.

Thus, when security attempts to take out a natty journal from Sherlock's bag—which lead to a vicious "donttouchthat!" from Sherlock as he snatches the shoddy, sad-looking book back—Mycroft knows why.

He knows, and is silent.

Because after Sarajevo his brother became a man with nothing left to lose who kept being reminded of the fact, who kept having it dumped in his hands again only to trickle through his fingers like sand.

Sherlock's fingers are turning white around the journal as he clutches it to him before their private plane leaves. Once they're in the air, he turns to his side as if to go to sleep, but amid the quiet churn of the propellers Mycroft can hear the turning of pages. He busies himself with his phone, awaiting news from Mary, whom he's sent to monitor the hospital.

He knows that, if what awaits them in Sarajevo is not John Watson—or worse—it will be the last time Sherlock allows himself to hope.

There will be no more after that.

Sherlock will have nothing left to give.

* * *

Mary had always been his favourite assistant.

She knew how emotions ought to be dealt with. She knew how to counteract them, how to balance them, how to use them.

She stands before him, raw. Her eyes are red. She's tired.

"Are you sure?" Mycroft asks quietly.

"No." She answers. "There were a lot of bandages on his face and he didn't talk much."

"What about the lab results? Was the DNA a match?"

"They're still waiting on it. The medical system isn't as organised here."

Mycroft exhales, rubbing at his temples.

"Where is he, Mycroft?"

He doesn't turn to his brother immediately. He sees Mary's gaze dart to Sherlock and back.

"_Where is he, Mycroft_?"

"Sherlock, a little patience will do you wonders, really—"

A hand on his shoulder spins him around before he can plant his weight to counter it.

"I did _not_ fly halfway across the world to be _patient_, and I did not live through seven weeks of absolute hell to wait any longer than I have to. _Where is he_?" Sherlock yells hoarsely before he seems to collapse in on himself, rubbing the palms of his hands over his face as if he could hide himself away from his brother. "Mycroft, tell me where he is. Please…just tell me."

"Sherlock."

"Please."

"He's down the hall," Mycroft says calmly. "Third door on the left."

Sherlock disappears from his line of sight, coat swirling behind him as he strides down the hall.

* * *

If the devil existed, it must have created hope.

This is what Sherlock decides, after reading the text Mycroft's phone.

Hope. He can't stop it from blooming in his chest, hot and warm, even though he tries dousing it with cold logic.

John can't have survived. Sherlock had seen the explosion, felt the heat, heard the screeching metal and collapsing concrete as the inferno tore through terra firma, its violent birth raging before his eyes.

Cremation takes place between 815-1037 Celsius, 1,500-1,900 degrees Fahrenheit, and 1088 Kelvin. The heat from a house fire alone can reach well past 1100 degrees. John would have been disintegrated, burned alive, in seconds. So too would have Moran. And, deep somewhere inside, he thinks so too would have Mikheia, because if the boy had escaped, he would have come to Sherlock by now, if only because he had nowhere else to go.

This doesn't stop Sherlock from thinking that John could have escaped. He could have leapt into the river at the last moment or—though Sherlock's stomach twists at the irony—jumped, but the blast radius alone would have left him badly burned, perhaps to the point that, if the fire hadn't killed him, he would have drowned in the river, and no one would have survived a fall from that height unless they'd planned it—and not everyone thought that far ahead. Perhaps he hadn't even been in the car park at all, but that didn't explain why John hadn't found him then, why he hadn't returned to the hotel or collapsed next to Sherlock in the wet grass of the assembly plant where he belonged.

Yet, here, despite his reflexive doubt, was hope.

_PATIENT NUMBER: 19-5-2-1-13-15-18_

_LOCATION: Kosevo Hospital, Klinicki Centar Univerziteta, Bolnicka 25 Sarajevo 71000_

_PATIENT IS AWAKE, LUCID & TALKING._

_SAYS HIS NAME IS JOHN WATSON._

He will not forgive Mycroft for this transgression. He will not forgive Mycroft for many things, but this, by far, is the worst. Something inside Sherlock recoils at the thought that John was injured somewhere and he wasn't beside him. That he was a thousand miles away and John suffered alone.

Mycroft seems unperturbed by his unending silence. The jealous child that Sherlock keeps locked away inside him wishes, spitefully, to—just once—see a look of concern on his brother's face. But he is left to pout.

He wants to see regret, remorse, even. Mycroft is not stupid. He knows what he's done. What line he's crossed. Sherlock was sure to outline the nature of his relationship with John, even before Moriarty and the fall and the Agency.

He'd barged into Mycroft's office—the Diogenes Club rules be damned—after hearing of one of his more recent abductions of John, and precisely told his brother about John Watson.

He is not to be used as a playing piece.

Myrcoft had nodded, and Sherlock had assumed it had ended there.

He'd wondered, amid a haze of anger, if Mycroft had forgotten his promise when John told him his boss was that slobbering walrus. But then John was high on a psychotic Sherlock had no experience with and then he was babbling desperately at John and the words _I love you_ were thrown in and then he had much more important things to focus on.

Now, seated across the aisle from a man who is actually repulsing him at present—a marvellous fact in itself, as it takes a monumentally heinous act to distinguish oneself from the masses that Sherlock finds disgusting anyways—Sherlock feels impotent rage pulse through him.

He wants to wrap his hands around Mycroft's throat and watch the light leave his eyes because it might not be true at all. John might be dead.

He wants to fall to his knees and praise him endlessly because…because it might be true. John might be alive.

The devil swings its arms, dangling hope before him on a silken thread that might be razor wire.

* * *

The hospital is boring. Sherlock didn't have to fly 1300 miles to find that out.

That doesn't stop the hope churning in his veins like gasoline as he paces the hall. He's waiting for the match to light. Waiting to see John's face, to see his eyes open and make him burn.

Mycroft is talking with Mary. Sherlock can't see her face. He doesn't know if he wants to.

Namecards in their placards fly by his gaze as he searches for the one with John's name on it.

He stops at the door Mycroft sent him to.

He closes his eyes.

* * *

Mycroft hears a faint sound, a choked breath, and he knows Sherlock's realised it. What's happened.

He walks slowly down the hall, to where his brother stands in front of the door, marked in neat Serbian:

'мртвачница'

Underneath it is its English counterpart:

'Morgue'

Sherlock has shut his eyes to it, as if it would erase its existence.

"Sherlock, he died. Last night."

Sherlock makes a noise in the back of his throat, one that Mycroft hasn't heard since he found him half-dead nearly a decade ago, the noise that means he wishes with every fibre of his being that he were more than just half-dead, that he might be allowed to cease to be in one instant.

"Take me to him."

* * *

Sherlock stares at the gleaming wall of shining metal. It's cold to the touch.

The cabinet is locked. He wishes it wasn't, so he might have a face to stare upon, but then he remembers that there wouldn't have been much to look at anyways.

Watson, John

That was it. That was John's whole existence. His name is all he has in death, and they didn't even include all of it. No one will look upon it and know that he was loved by Sherlock Holmes, or that Sherlock Holmes was loved by him. No one who sees it will know what kind of sweaters he wore or how he liked his tea or how his eyes looked when he pointed a gun at them or how his voice sounded in the morning.

Sherlock is the last vestige of the complete and unedited volumes of John Watson.

Despite John being not a foot away from him, he feels alone.

He is alone.

His fingers trace the neat lettering of John's name, thumb brushing over the end like it once did to John's mouth and hand and neck and he hears John gasping his name and feels his breath on his cheek and his laugh rings through Sherlock's ears and _John you can't just be gone—_

Sherlock collapses onto the floor as if his Achilles tendons have snapped. His knees are shaking. He buries his head in his hands, clutching at the roots of his hair like a drowning man to a life preserve.

"I'm sorry, John." He gasps, taking in a ragged breath. "I'm so sorry."

It hurts, not being able to beg for forgiveness. Not being able to look John in the eyes and _apologise_. Apologise for not being able to say sorry when John could hear him. For lying to him. For abandoning him for three years. For leaving him no other choice than the one that led them here. For loving him so completely that he noticed.

For failing him.

And Sherlock understands that he has. He knows he has, he knows right down to the marrow that fills his bones and the blood that rushes through his heart that he is the reason John Watson is now slowly decaying in a cold metal drawer.

All of John's touches, his words, his heart, all of him sat in that little box with his name that meant nothing to anyone else.

"I'm sorry." Sherlock whispers and it sounds like it's echoing across a chasm, a void of emptiness that he wishes wasn't so great and unreachable.

_"How many times am I going to hear that?"_ John had asked him once, in another life. Sherlock vaguely remembers there being a train.

_"How many times are your brilliant plans going to hurt me in the process? How many times are you not going to consider how I feel about whatever it is that you're planning and that maybe that I want to help you, not hinder you?"_

A shaky sigh tumbles from his chest. He cards his hands through his hair, as if that will somehow fix him.

"I don't blame you, you know." A voice says behind him and he doesn't need to turn around to know who it is.

"You should."

"With my bleeding heart?" Not-John chuckles as he rounds Sherlock to come into his view. "Impossible."

Sherlock lets his hand drop into his lap and stares at John's feet. Barefoot. Appropriate. Like Caesar Augustus. They could be twins then, casting their shadows over their conquered wares.

"Why can't you look at me?" He asks softly, but Sherlock hears snakes slithering in the grass.

"Because," Sherlock says quietly, hoarsely, shutting his eyes. "I can't look at you right now."

"That's not an answer. And, as much as I hate to rain on your parade, love," Not-John says and Sherlock can hear the smile before he slides down the row of drawers to sit opposite him. "You'll have to look at me sometime. You've got to clean the wound before it can heal."

"The wound," Sherlock says in a strangled voice, "will never heal."

"See, that's what I thought, when you left. When I was alone. I thought I'd never get past the emptiness of not having you in my life. Turns out, a few bullets solved that problem nicely."

"Is that a tribulation or advice?"

"It's whatever you want it to be."

Sherlock makes a noise of bitter appreciation.

"It's funny, is it?"

"What is?"

"That I ended up here. You know, the whole time I was in Afghanistan, in the heat and desert, all I wanted was to be cold and now I'm locked in a freezer. At least it's air conditioned—"

Sherlock wills his ears to shut as tightly as his eyes are, but he can't block out Not-John's laugh.

"_Stop it_, stop talking—"

"No, really, I mean it. You gave me the nicest meat locker you could find—"

Something in him snaps then. It feels odd, to attack the one he loves most yet hates more than anything in that moment.

It's not really John, anyways.

It's him. It's Sherlock. He's what's wrong.

He bangs his hand against the drawers as it flies through Not-John's face.

He hurts, but Not-John is gone, so he counts it a victory, however Pyrrhic.

Mycroft is behind him now. He can almost smell the pity. The sympathy. The plaster on a gangrenous wound. Not three hours ago, it was what the petulance in him craved. Now it makes him sick.

"How many times will I have to say goodbye?" Sherlock asks quietly.

"Hopefully," Mycroft sighs, attempting sympathy but sounding to Sherlock like impatience. "This is the last."

Sherlock purses his lips and shakes his head.

"No."

"No?"

"No. I'll always be saying goodbye."

* * *

Cila turns her eyes downcast as she walks.

Her burned man is gone. He died in the night.

The wheels of the gurney squeak as she carts it down the hall.

She can still hear his voice as he talked to her, can still see his face and those great eyes as they stared into her, through muscle and sinew and into her soul. He hadn't looked away, like so many do when looking into the sun. He told her she is an eclipse.

She walks by two men, speaking quietly in English. One of them looks to her as she passes. She might say he's handsome, even beautiful, if it wasn't for the gaunt face and skeleton body. He looks like Death, living. He is Atlas, crushed. He frightens her, the way he stares at her, at everything and nothing. She wonders who he's lost, who meant so much to him that make the emptiness she sees in his eyes seem so heavy.

She looks away.

The door to the morgue shuts softly.

She's alone.

She inhales, steeling herself as she unzips the bag. She told her husband she'd only be a moment.

Her burned man sits up, ruffling his hair as his eyes adjust to the light. He smiles at her, grabs her by the waist and presses his face to her stomach. She lays her hands on his head and she feels like she's blessing him with life. A new life. A baptism, here in the morgue where the dry, cold air stings her throat.

She clips the tag off his toe and tosses it in the rubbish bin. She supposes the mortician will wonder why there's a blank one in the garbage, but they probably won't think too hard on it.

She gives him his wallet, christens him with his old credit cards, his I.D., his identity, his life.

Sebastian Moran.

Such a lovely name.


	5. giants

"Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell."

Edna St. Vincent Millay

* * *

It's quiet. The bad kind. It screams, high and silent, heaving its loneliness around the room like a great inescapable giant, throwing its weight around and crushing his body into the bed.

_Look at me look at me look at you look how alone you are isn't that sad you're back where you started alone so alone that empty space beside you in you around you will never be filled again you lost him you lost him you lost him it's all your fault you did this you killed him he's a pile of bones and you stripped his body away until he was nothing gone forever he's dead he's dead he's _—

"Sherlock."

Sherlock doesn't open his eyes, just rolls over in the darkness, onto his side, away from the door.

He hears Mycroft sigh. The silence has made his hearing sharpen, acute to the rustle of Mycroft's suit, the sound of his breath, and he hates it. Hates him. He aches with the heaviest loathing he's ever felt, it's turned his bones to lead and he'll never get up again but is that so bad he'll just waste away to dust and maybe the wind would carry him to wherever John was going to be buried and he'd settle over the grave like he'd collapsed on it, eternally embracing the hallowed ground where John's body decayed into nothing. Maybe, someday, the dust of their bones would mix and they could finally be together like they'd wanted.

"Sherlock you have to eat."

Sherlock makes a noise like a dying animal. He could only be so lucky to imitate it.

John smiles at him over Chinese food, tuts at him as he stitches a wound on his forehead and tells him to never scare him like that again, laughs at a dry comment Sherlock made at the telly, glances at him over the top of his book because he thinks Sherlock won't notice (he _always_ noticed), curls up on the sofa after crashing from the sedatives the hospital gave him for a broken arm after a particularly rough case (Sherlock had seen to it through Mycroft that the assailant suffered for it) and tells him things Sherlock never thought to think of about him—he really hates halibut ('it's _too_ fishy, y'know?' he slurs), he memorised the Spice Girls' top hits and always sang them at drunken karaoke pub nights in university, he thought he'd marry his second serious girlfriend ('but she wasn't you—oh fuck me that wasn't what I meant—fuck that wasn't what I meant either'), the first soldier he'd saved was named Seth and the first soldier that had died in his care was Neil, his favourite pizza toppings were peppers and tomatoes (but not sundried), and that he loved root beer jelly beans but not popcorn or cinnamon ('they taste like a hot, sweaty lockeroom and bad deodorant'). Sherlock remembers thinking that he should drug John more often, if this uninhibited honesty was the outcome.

Sherlock remembers it all. Everything about him. Their brief reunion had only refreshed everything that he'd known and loved about him since before his fall. Not that he'd forgotten. Every detail he could ever recall about John—and it was an almost infinite cache—was steadfastly run through and double-checked when he could spare the time. Tie patterns, shampoo brand, television preferences, shoe scuffs, failed relationships (and reasons why in numerical order), number of calls to his mother (rare), number of visits to Harry (thankfully few), indent of the corners of his smile verses indent of frown when disappointed, it was all logged and reviewed until he saw John once more in that old drafty church in Bruges and the ink began to run so the details bled together. He'd changed—not that Sherlock hadn't—but in a way to where Sherlock's log was incompatible with the man that was in front of him, as if he were observing two completely different men. It made sense. Sherlock had never seen John the soldier in full, only glimpses and blink-and-you-miss-it instances. He could see why Mycroft had hired him.

Fucking Mycroft. He was still in the room. Why? It had been a full ten point twelve seconds since he'd spoken last, surely he'd realised he was on a fool's errand.

"Sherlock, I have news."

"He's not alive again, is he?" Sherlock asked dryly. "The number of times that man has been resurrected at this point would displease a Buddhist."

"You don't have to hide from me behind your snide comments, you know. I know you, brother dear."

"You don't know a _thing_." Sherlock hisses, wishing he could instantly suffocate and have this conversation over with.

"J—_He_ wouldn't want you to be like this."

"Don't you _dare_ tell me what he would want!" Sherlock snarls, bringing his face up to glare at his brother. "You have no right to dictate what he would _want_ me to do," He swings his legs over the edge of the bed and stands, advancing on his brother. "You didn't live with him, you didn't love him, _you didn't_ _know_." He punctuates each word with a further invasion of Mycroft's space until by the last one their noses are nearly touching.

"If you eat something, I will tell you the news I have."

"Is it any of my concern?"

"It's the most of yours, yes."

"Is it about him?"

"Why don't you eat and I'll tell you."

Sherlock's eyes dart over his, searching, collecting date, analysing. Mycroft is using John's tactic. He's learned.

"Fine."

* * *

Sherlock stares down at the plate in front of him. An egg and a slice of toast stare back. They are the ugliest things he'd ever seen.

Mycroft sits across from him, his presence looming like a shadow.

Eat it. Do it for John. He'd want you to.

It doesn't matter. He can't. Doesn't want to. John's not around to chastise him.

He stares at the food and feels bile churn in his stomach, biting at itself, at its emptiness.

John.

_John_.

"You told me you've been through this before." Sherlock says, poking about his plate with the edge of his fork.

"I did, yes."

"How did he die?"

Mycroft stills, going even stiffer than Sherlock could imagine a human body was capable of.

"Not well."

"You've heard my story—"

"I didn't hear it, Sherlock, I was present—"

"Well you _know_ of it," Sherlock snaps, "So tell me."

Mycroft stares at him but doesn't answer. Sherlock sighs petulantly and clatters his fork to his plate.

"I won't eat."

"Quite histrionic of you, brother mine."

"Fine. Would you like me to deduce it?"

Mycroft remains tight lipped, his face lined with distaste. Sherlock's eyes narrow as he begins to catalogue every detail about him—his posture, the creases of his mouth, the curve of his brow—and begins to draw information from their roots. The corners of his lips spelled out disappointment—the cause of death was never fully resolved, and it had left Mycroft bitter—and the softness of his procerus suggested remembrance—whether it was fond or not, it meant this man had stuck with Mycroft for a while, so their relationship was important, and seeing as Mycroft had only ever had enough time for a relationship was outside of his job, it occurred during university. So a meaningful relationship between young adults that ended in disappointment and lingering memories, coupled with the fact that Mycroft considered it a loss, something he couldn't ever get back—

"He was murdered." Sherlock finally concludes.

"Suicide, actually."

The coldness of the answer surprises him, for a moment. Mycroft had seemed so adamant to discuss the topic, it was something he cared about. He was deflecting.

"How?"

"Does it matter?"

"John was burned to death." Sherlock said solemnly. "How did yours die?"

Now he understood the coldness in his brother's voice. Callousness was the only way he could mention John's name and remain in one piece.

"Overdose." Mycroft answered shortly. "Sleeping pills."

A breath of laughter escapes Sherlock.

"And you talk to _me_ about histrionics."

"You would understand why, of course. You both were the same breed."

"What, lonely geniuses with an eye for detail?"

"Unhappy. Incredibly so. Burdened with an active mind that made your body heavy with the kind of sadness that makes it hard to open your eyes in the morning."

Sherlock stares at him and it is his turn to say nothing.

"In many ways," Mycroft continued, "He completed me by being everything I wasn't, like John did for you. He was funny and loud and crass and I loved him. When we were together, the world seemed lighter, the sun was warmer, and I was happy, enough so that I couldn't see that he wasn't. He told me once that he wished we could stay as we were forever. I suspect he feared growing up, going out into a world that he felt he had no idea how to handle. I used to imagine how it would be after we graduated, how we'd move in together and create our own life, together. I assumed, wrongly perhaps, that he knew we would end up together, that I'd be there for him, to help him. The day before graduation, I found him in his room, asleep. I made him breakfast before I went to wake him up. Of course I'm certain you realise that my venture was foolish. I didn't wake him up. He was dead, and I was alone with a cooling breakfast that he'd never eat."

"What was his name?"

"Ben."

"Do you know why?"

"No. I'll never really know, only hypothesise, which I learned long ago would never get me anywhere I wanted to be."

"How long did it take until it didn't hurt anymore?"

"There's a patron at the Diogenes Club that I work with. He often complains of his leg that aches in the cold. It's his right one, the one he was shot in when he was a young soldier. He's an old man now and that wound has been long healed, but it still bothers him some days. He swore once that when it snowed his leg burned as if he'd just been shot again and he'd collapsed to the ground from the pain. Other days he says it feels like a memory, a dream of what happened."

"That wasn't an answer."

"Yes," Mycroft says carefully. "It was."

Sherlock nodded and picked up his fork, taking a large bite of egg.

The brothers fell into silence.


	6. ime

"I would never make a lion, I knew that; but I might pick up a small gain here and there in the attempt."

Saul Bellow

* * *

Silence was becoming his constant companion, and he adored it, kissed its feet, wrapped himself around it every chance he got. Silence was his lover, his best friend, his one and only, because every second it stayed was one more moment where no one disturbed him.

Sherlock blinked, staring at the worn pages of John's journal, but not reading, not really seeing. He'd already read it all, stared at the words as if John's secrets would peek out from behind the ink.

Silence also tended to be a cruel mistress. It was cold and quiet, leaving his questions unanswered, always reminding him of the body that should be filling that space, of the warm words that should brush the silence of his world away, dispersing it into the air and that slow smile that meant everything was alright.

Everything would be alright if he could see that smile again.

If. If. If.

He can't, he can't. John is dead. He'll never smile again.

Slowly, the stillness of the room began to wrap itself around his throat, the deafening roar of silence shoving itself in his ears until he was practically choking on it, until he was mad with it, why him, why now, why, why—

"Why didn't you let me do it?"

Mycroft looked up from his paper, eyebrow raised, ignorant of his brother's internal struggle.

"To what are you referring?"

"I wanted to die." Sherlock bit out, knuckles white from his grip on the chair. "I still do. Why must you insist on stopping me?"

"You didn't have the right to end it."

"And you have the right to control it?" Sherlock snaps.

Mycroft's face is tight, stoic. He speaks carefully.

"Think of John, Sherlock. And what—"

"What he'd want me to do? You've become a hypocrite Mycroft, as you do so_ loathe_ repetition. I think that, of all the rights I may or may not have, an indelible one is my ability to choose—"

"Choose what, exactly? The coward's way out?"

"Over a life of misery? Over a life that John is not in? I'd rather be a coward than live as a ghost."

"Think of what John did."

"He did a lot of things. He lived, he made good tea, he loved me, he died."

"He did the greatest thing, Sherlock. He _persevered_. He survived. He watched you die, and still he lived."

"I assume this is after you gave him his 'job'." Sherlock sneers, the last word flung out in disgust.

Mycroft sighs heavily.

"In the most economic sense, he was an available and effective resource. In the personal sense, I watched him waste away and I knew I could save him, so I did."

"You made him kill people."

"People who deserved it, people who he agreed to kill. And he was a willing participant. He signed his own name where it was required. He was also, if you remember, a soldier. He killed people before you, so I must ask is it so shocking that he did so after?"

"There was no _after_ me. There was only with and without. I am the after, I'm what's left—dammit Mycroft, he was supposed to die _after_ me, he wasn't supposed to go when I needed him, I was going to come back after Bruges and he was supposed to be here waiting!"

"And do you think," Mycroft says softly. "That if I hadn't approached him, he would still be waiting? Waiting for your ghost to show up as you resurrect the body he thought he buried? He thought you were dead, Sherlock. He felt the way you do now. Do you think he still would have been waiting, or would he have gone the way you wish to now?"

"He wouldn't have—"

"He told me as much, once. He came to me and asked if the plot beside your grave was open, and if I could arrange it to be available for him upon his death. Even someone without my intellect could realise the future he saw for himself, and how immediate it was."

"But he didn't, he found me in Bruges."

"And because of whom do you think that was the case?" Mycroft says tightly. "John was not omnipotent, he was a man…just a man. Didn't you ever stop to question _why_ he was given your location, why someone happened to order him to kill you? Why there was no retribution from his side when he failed to kill you and instead tried to flee? You say you want to die, that life is nothing without him, that you're alone and no one cares, but how constantly you seem to forget that I have already lived that life before you, and I lived through it. Do you think in that moment I found Ben I didn't want to join him? Do you think I rarely give you so much of a thought unless I happen to _need_ you? You have always had someone on your side, Sherlock. You'd do well to remember that." Mycroft sniffs, fluttering his paper before continuing. "You'd also do well to take a shower once in a while, and perhaps get some fresh air too."

Ten minutes later, Sherlock emerges from the bathroom, padding into his room as he towels his wet hair. Neither brother will mention how his eyes are too red to be from the steam of a cold shower that they are both aware he took.

Quietly, he changes into freshly laundered clothes, carefully ignoring the grimy, dirtied shirt lying on the chair, that shirt he was wearing that night, and he's moving his other arm into the sleeve before he remembers.

He turns on his heel, his mind suddenly burning, before he stops in front of Mycroft, his shirt unbuttoned and lying off his shoulder.

"You said there was one body."

Mycroft slowly lowered the paper.

"I wasn't aware you were lucid during that moment."

"Whose body? It wasn't John's." The last part comes out more as a query. "John…John died in that hospital. You gave me someone else's ashes and told me they were his. I have every right to my suspicions on who is or is not dead. Whose body?"

"The dental records were all we could salvage."

"And?"

"They were…inconclusive. They didn't match anyone in the database. Is it so pertinent that you know?"

Sherlock scoffs heavily and whirls around, beginning to pace before his brother.

_Moran or Mikheia…it makes all the difference. One for revenge, one more for mourning._

"Who did you give the dental records to?" Sherlock says loudly, turning to grab his coat, shrugging it on with the rest of his shirt as he buttons it.

"Kosovo Hospital—honestly, Sherlock, calm down there's nothing they can confirm for you there that you don't already know—"

"I'm going. Come with me or stay here, I don't care, but don't get in my way."

"Sherlock—"

"You wanted me to _persevere_, didn't you? This is how. I've had my shower. Time for fresh air, don't you think?"

Mycroft purses his lips before setting down his paper.

"Let me get my shoes."

* * *

Pain. He remembers a lot of pain later, when he remembers anything about that night. A face swims before him, lurking in the muddy water that's gotten in his eyes and his lungs.

He fades in.

He fades out.

He's being dragged, strung along. He can't breathe; his chest feels wet, full of heavy lead that presses down and in. Blood gets in his eyes (and his mouth, he can taste it).

Someone is desperate. They want him alive. That's nice. Someone cares if he dies. He'd like to be alive. That'd be nice. Really nice. He doesn't know why. He doesn't know if he wants to live for himself, or for someone else.

There's so much water. In him. Around him. He's floating, or it feels like it. This is eternity, then, floating forever on a river in the night. It's not so bad. Someone's holding his hand. It's not so bad. Otters do that, so they don't get separated. So they're never alone. Otters. Is he one? No? No, of course not. He's a person. What's his name? He doesn't remember. It's like he just woke up, all he can focus on is the moment, but he knows if he tried he could remember more. He just doesn't want to.

There's a sharp pain in his chest, a constant thumping that he really wishes would stop. It gets harder and quicker, and distantly he wonders if his body is bumping against something, carried by the current that's currently very lovely and soft and very much all he wants right now.

Suddenly he feels his throat close, tighten in on itself and convulse, and he's on his side and vomiting and there is land beneath him, wet, muddy cold land and oh he is alive and someone is here and oh they're saving his life. He hasn't loved anyone else so much in his life more than this stranger. Or maybe he has. He doesn't know. He'll know later. He's sure of it.

_Ime_, someone shouts, _Ime_.

The letters spin in his ears, swirling in the water.

_I am._ He thinks, before he passes out.

_I am—_


	7. resurrection

"Doctor Alkaev?"

He turns at his name, coming face to face with two tall, obviously foreign men, one pallid and drawn, looking to be one step in the grave, and the other straight-backed and serious. He startles for a moment at just how much he and Death Walking look alike; both skinny and possessing dark hair laced with curls, both with high, defined cheekbones and pronounced lips. But for his glasses and the distant, grieving look in Death's eyes, they could be the same man.

"_Da_?" He asks, shaking off his surprise. "_Mogu li da vam pomognem_?"

"_Oprosti nam, naš srpskog je lose._" The one that looks to be a diplomat begins solemnly."_Engleskom_?"

"English? Yes." He hangs up the clipboard in his hands and turns back to the men. "What can I do for you?"

"We're here to make inquiries—possibly concerning criminal behavior—on behalf of the NATO office in Camp Butmir." The grim one flashes a badge quickly and pulls a notepad from his pocket, while the other one that looks like Death remains silent. "Have you had any in-patients with severe burns in the past 3 months?"

"3 months?" The doctor's face furrows as he thinks. "There were three patients from a house fire two weeks ago, and one from a car accident this weekend…"

"Any male patients from their 30s to mid-40s? Possibly injured in an industrial accident?"

"Male—let me think…there was a man admitted about three months ago, from an explosion in an abandoned munitions factory."

"John Watson, but we couldn't find any records on him, or nationality."

"He died a few days ago, I believe?"

"Yes, he did. A shame, he was a very nice man."

"He talked?" Death spoke suddenly, and both men's attentions turned to him.

"Rarely, but yes. We ran blood tests and found traces of an unidentified benzodiazepine, so he was treated for mild withdrawal as well as severe burns."

"Benzodiazepine." Death repeated quietly, his eyes narrowing.

"Apologies, but why exactly are you asking about him? Was he an _ugolovnik_? A criminal?"

"No, he wasn't, but we believe his death was criminal-related. May I ask where you're from?"

"Sarajevo—"

"I mean originally. That word you used, _ugolovnik_. It's Russian."

The doctor could feel his ears redden.

_Murija_.

"Our languages are very similar, some of our vernacular is shared—"

"No games, please. We aren't here to arrest you, or embarrass you. Just tell us the truth."

"I…I have not lived there for many years. I was born there originally, in a small city, but I came here after I graduated university."

The Diplomat nodded.

"I understand that your wife works with you?"

"Yes, Cila. She is an attending nurse."

"May we speak with her please?"

"Yes, she should be finishing her shift, a moment please…"

Alkaev turned down the hall, stiffness laced between the vertebrae of his spine. He seemed to want to be as far away from them as possible, and all but rushes to turn the corner to his wife's station.

"He lied about his heritage." Mycroft says softly to his brother. "If he doesn't tell the truth about the menial facts, think on what we should expect about the ones that matter—"

He stops as he looks at Sherlock, whose attention is elsewhere.

"Sherlock." He says softly. Sherlock's gaze turns from the Morgue door back to him.

"She doesn't love him anymore." He replies, eyes hardening quickly like cooling wax. "His wife. He's been twisting his ring; whatever's bothering him is something domestic. He has a stain on his collar, he ate lunch alone today or someone—most likely his wife—would have pointed it out to him and he would have attempted to wash it out in the bathroom. They had a fight over something recently, probably last night, most likely within the past few days. His lack of apology can be contributed to the fact that he feels himself to be the victim—a trait not uncommon on the male end of a relationship as I understand the stereotype is that women are constantly both confusing and in flux concerning their emotions—but in his case it's justified, since Cila Alkaev brought something up that both surprised and angered him. She is who we should question next."

"Very well. He's been gone longer than anticipated, so we might make our way to his office." Mycroft says with a tight smile, which fades when his eyes dart to That Door. "Sherlock—"

"We have work to do." Sherlock cuts him off curtly. "He's just a body in a box; me wasting time staring at it won't do anyone any good."

He breezes past Mycroft, his posture even straighter than Dr Alkaev's, and Mycroft can sense coldness radiating down his brother's spine, pooling in his joints and curling around his nerves like ice.

With one last glance back, he follows.

* * *

Alkaev doesn't turn as they cross the threshold, his back to them and his head bent over to look at something.

"Doctor?" Mycroft asks civilly, his brow furrowing with polite concern.

Alkaev cards a hand through his greying hair and his shoulders quiver.

"Cila, she is…unavailable. Gone."

He turns and Sherlock recognises a shade of himself in this man's eyes; they are eyes that are watching their lives drain through the sifting, gapped fingers of fate.

Wordlessly, the doctor hands a note to Mycroft, written in hurried but clean English.

_I met a ghost. His name is Sebastian, and I am his shadow. He came to us burned and I healed him. I resurrected him, fed him bits of myself until he consumed me completely. You were good to me and you are and will always be a good man. This is not your fault. We were not as meant to be as I am with him. We were only halflings and I am alive now. I love you, but that fact is eclipsed in the face of his sun. Please do not try and find me. Please move on. I do not deserve your grief._

_увек волети,_

_Cila_

"All she left…a half sheet of paper. Married for seven years, and this is all that's left."

Sherlock does not have time for this man's personal crisis. His wife's has ensnared his full attention.

_His name is Sebastian_.

"I need your keys to the morgue." He says calmly to Alkaev.

"Sherlock, please, be rational—"

Alkaev barely hesitates before reaching into his pocket, dropping the keys into Sherlock's palm, his other hand tightening around the note.

Sherlock is out of the door in the next moment, striding down the hall and barging into the room.

He approaches the drawer marked with the only words that have ever mattered to him, the only words he can think of, and tries the first key.

"Don't do it." Not-John's voice says from his side as he leans against the drawers. "You're not gonna like what you find."

"Not now." Sherlock barks, trying the next key. "I have to know. I have to know if I have to bury you or not, I have to—"

It fits.

He turns it, hearing the tumblers click, and pulls the drawer out.

"I told you." Not-John sighs.

Sherlock can't _think_.

The drawer is empty.

* * *

He floats to consciousness, his ears ringing with the burn of hearing a high frequency. He smells a saccharine, thick scent—manure?—coated by a layer of something bright and fresh and grassy.

Words flow through his ears, but they are sucked down into mud and sudden black holes. Someone is talking to him, and he can't hear them.

He opens his eyes, and he doesn't know it yet, but that was one of the most important decisions he'd ever make in his life.

As he tugs his consciousness back into him, as his mind begins to burn as it wakens, everything begins to come into focus.

He's in a barn—or at least that's what these ruins used to be—on his back. His clothes are soaked. His side aches and he puts a hand to it, but jumps back at the sharp pain; when he raises his palm, he can see blood.

What the fuck happened?

Someone leans over him, blocking the thick streams of sunlight from the deteriorating roof above. For a moment, they are nothing more than shadow. Their face is blurred, a mess of dampness, streaked with a dried paste of mud, river silt, and blood. Despite their wash, they both smell of fire, of something that's done nothing but burn for its entire existence.

Mikheia smiles at him.

"Welcome back, sir."


	8. tales

_**"The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them."**_ _**— Ernest Hemingway**_

* * *

Mycroft barely catches a glimpse of the empty drawer, pulled nearly off its track, before Sherlock is barrelling past him back down the hall into the doctor's office. The tag with John's name on it lies on the floor, forgotten.

_Bad. Very bad. Latent rage, months to burn, now an outlet offers itself..._

Hurriedly, he strides after him, catching the edge of the door before it slams closed in front of him.

"Sherlock—"

His brother ignores him as he edges into the room, grabbing the doctor by his lapels and slamming him against the desk.

"Why was that note in English?" He snarls, his eyes brighter than Mycroft's seen them in weeks, brighter than when he was shot full of heroin, brighter than when he thought John was alive. He can tell Sherlock is feeling the ache of disappointed hope, and his mind is changing it into rage like icy water turns to steam. "Your wife is a Serbian native, or thereabout. You speak the same language. Why would she write to you in English?"

"I—I don't know—"

"She didn't write that note, did she? You did. You wrote it the moment you were alone. That's why you were in here so long. You didn't want to seem as insignificant as her real note made you feel."

"I—" Words seem to fail Alkaev as he searches for the right one to make this madman drop him. "_Yes_, fine, I did, I wrote it. Put me down. _Put me down_!"

"Why?" Sherlock growls, keeping him pinned to the desk.

"_Jebi se_!"

Sherlock didn't know what the doctor spat at him, but he could tell by the vitriol with which it was said what it probably meant.

"Sherlock," Mycroft says as he places a steady hand on his shoulder. "Put him down."

For a moment, Mycroft can practically hear the gears turning in that hyperactive head, weighing his options, before Alkaev's feet touch the floor and Sherlock backs away.

"Doctor Alkaev, I apologise for my brother." Mycroft cuts in smoothly. "He…has a great investment in your wife's disappearance.

His solid presence, matched to the instability of his brother, seems to diffuse the situation as quickly as a thumb to lit wick, and the doctor brushes back his hair as he regains his composure.

"I apologise as well. I am…not in my right mind at the moment. My wife has abandoned me for a _stranac_, an alien. This morning, before I left, I kissed her in the kitchen, and she _knew_, she knew then that she was going to leave me, yet she let me kiss her anyways. She left me, and she let me believe everything was alright."

"I'm sorry for your loss." Mycroft consoles and Sherlock thinks he almost sounds sincere. Almost. "Did she leave anything behind? Anything to indicate where she was going? I urge you to be as honest as possible, as NATO does tend to frown upon fraudulence."

Alkeav hesitates then nods. He walks to where his coat hangs on the back of his door, warily eyeing Sherlock, who steadfastly stares at him like a mongrel stares at meat, and digs through the pocket before drawing out a carefully folded note.

_Заборави ми. Опрости ми._

_увек волети_

_Cila_

"What does it say?" Mycroft asks gently. Sherlock resists the urge to roll his eyes.

"'Forget me.'" Alkaev sighs heavily, grief lodged in his throat. "'Forgive me. Love always…Cila'."

"If we find your wife, would you like us to tell her anything?"

"Tell her I'll be waiting. Tell her I'll still love her, please."

Mycroft nods, tucking the note away.

"Very well. Thank you for your cooperation, Doctor Alkaev. Again, our condolences."

Alkaev nods, returning Mycroft's grim smile which slides off his face as he sees Sherlock's meagre parody. Sherlock supposes it must look patronising to him. It probably is, if he cared enough to think about it.

He crowds into Mycroft's space the moment they leave the room, striding beside him down the hall.

"You may want to think of another disguise if we're coming back tomorrow."

"And why would we possibly need to do that?"

"Because he didn't give us any relevant information, other than the wonderful fact that he's now suddenly a cuckold; forgive me if I don't reach for my tissue—"

"You mustn't be so hard on the poor doctor, Sherlock. He comes from a Soviet-ruled era. They have a habit of glossing over ugly truths with pretty falsities. Besides, his wife has left him for another man, for _Moran_, no less, for the man who is responsible for John's—"

"_Shut it, _Mycroft." Sherlock barks, whirling on his heel to glare at his brother, his eyes hard and angry.

"Sherlock, haven't you had enough of having his fate in the air? Surely of all people you'd want to know—"

"Of _course _I do, Mycroft, how could you even think—we still have no clue _where_ they've gone…"

He trails off as they stop in the lobby, the white snow glaring at them behind steamed glass. Mycroft hands him Cila's note from his pocket and he can feel the thin paper through his gloves and see that the edges are frayed, as if this has been torn off of something larger. A receipt?

"Look on the back." Mycroft says lowly and Sherlock turns it over.

There, in bold, black ink, just below the remains of the torn-off date, is printed: **+387 36**

"A postal code?" Sherlock wonders aloud.

"No." Mycroft says quietly. "An area number."

* * *

Cold air whistles through the holes of the rotting wooden roof as birds chirp, fluttering through the creaking beams above. Speckled chickens scuffle around the muck of broken hay and mud, pecking about for anything edible. Somewhere in the near distance, cattle groan in their pasture and goats bleat back at them.

Bales of hay have been hastily stacked in a rudimentary seat that a figure is now slumped in, bare chest heaving with laboured breath, with another bending over them. Every so often, there's a belayed groan of pain and a plink of something hitting porcelain. The figure shudders.

"Be still, please. I am bad at this enough as it is."

"Sorry. Can't help it." The response comes through gritted teeth.

"Sir, do you recommend sutures or stitches?" Mikheia asks, dropping a tiny blood-coated piece of debris into a bowl of clear water tinted a light red.

John Watson opens his eyes, bleary with pain and withdrawal, and glances down.

"Same thing, technically." He says and then groans at the pain as Mikheia prods at his side, picking out pebbles and splinters of wood that have lodged in the deep cut that runs along his ribcage. "But let's go with stitches. Might be a chance of debridement, don't want to risk infection…"

"It is a miracle the fall did not kill us, as injured as we may be. Although you, sir, you gave me quite the scare, you nearly drowned—"

"What fall?"

Mikheia drops another stone into the bowl and looks up at him with raised eyebrows.

"You…do not remember?"

John shakes his head, grimacing as a particularly painful dig. "Where's Sherlock, anyways? Shouldn't he be here nagging at us? Or at least holding my hand?"

Mikheia freezes, drawing back gently as he raises his head. John doesn't like the look on his face.

"What happened?" He breathes.

"What do you remember?" Mikheia asks quietly.

John stares into nothing for a moment, his brow furrowing.

"Cars." He says finally. "Something about…cars. And heat. Lots of it. Mikheia, what happened? Sherlock…"

_Sherlock, what happened to Sherlock, tell me, tell me just please don't say he's dead don't tell me he's not here please God not again not again—_

"We are ghosts. Sherlock...he most likely thinks that we are dead."

"Tell me everything."

* * *

Water. Rushing water. He hears it behind him, in the back of his mind, and it feels like the rush of his heart as it pounds in his chest. His oily hands, greasy from siphoning what petrol remained in the abandoned cars' tanks, slip on the gear-shift of a car decades out of date as he shift it to neutral and turns its steering wheel slowly, willing the tyres to be as silent as possible as he begins to push it forward with all his weight.

"Any last words?" He hears Moran growl, hears the danger in his voice, the power that radiates off him, even though his back is turned. It feels like it's reverberating through the concrete. He _must_ know Mikheia is there, up on the ramp, he _must_; he seems to be everywhere and nowhere, omnipresent and omnipotent. Moran knew the moment he walked in that a scared little boy crouches in the shadows, torn between whether he will change his life or wet his pants or both. Is this what fear feels like? True fear, deep in the hot-blood pit of his gut?

He hears John's voice, and he straightens as it chases away the cold fear like the burn of vodka washes out his throat, hot and bright like he's plucked a star from the sky and swallowed it. Hastily, quietly, he pulls the emergency brake as the car crests the ramp, threatening to roll downwards all on its own.

"10. 15. 8. 14."

Mikheia shuts his eyes and takes a deep breath.

"You and Holmes got some sort of code now?"

"Not exactly." John says and Mikheia smiles, despite himself. Despite the situation. He's alive and he might die and it's just wonderful and _this is what life tastes like_, what the poets always wrote about and what heroes always chase. He's gripped his own life in its hands and it's so bright and lovely and he just might be at the end of it but he doesn't care.

_It's time._

Funny, really, how once he disengages the emergency brake it only takes one large push before the car begins to roll down the ramp, headed directly towards Moran as it picks up speed.

"Famous last words—" Moran begins, and Mikheia can practically hear the smile drop off his face as he hears the oncoming car and whips around, diving out of the way just before it careens into him, leaving it to crash into the elevator shaft. Ducking behind the cover of a nearby car, Moran smashes out a window and begins to fire in John's direction as the car alarms from both wounded vehicles begin to blare. If he'd been in any other situation, Mikheia would be impressed by their sheer battery life, remnants of the cars built for longevity and not appreance, but he's in the warzone now and can't sacrifice the time to think about it.

He takes advantage of Moran ducking down as John returns fire, running as fast as he can down the ramp and behind the side of the elevator shaft, out of Moran's sight.

He ducks around the side, hurrying to the gaping maw that holds the rusted lift. Inside, curled in the corner amid a hanful of cans of petrol, is the package he placed there after running from Sherlock Holmes, the only man he'd follow to the ends of the earth, the only man he has gone to the ends of the earth _for_. And for John, he'd go a little farther. For the two of them, for two men who together created the only real father he'd ever truly known, he'd go a little farther.

_"I needed to talk to you, sir. Alone."__1_

He'd told John then, in that hallway as their time ticked down and away, told him of what Moran was going to do, of what Mikheia had already done in retaliation, namely that he'd gathered packets of saltpetre and a block of sodium metal, pillaged them from the empty rooms of the factory, and bound them together in that little bundle that now lay in the bottom of the lift where John had told him to put it. He told John that Moran had his family, he told him that he wasn't afraid to die for them or for John himself or for Sherlock, how he'd gladly do it, if it meant they would live. John had looked hard at him then, a look Mikheia had seen once on his father's face, a look of a man who had decided to die for someone he loved. He'd listened as John instructed him how to ignite the package, how he'd handed Mikheia the matches that now rested in his pocket, how he'd told him to find a working car in the garage and hotwire it (Mikheia realised then that this was why John had asked him what he was good at, that day in the hospital after he'd been shot. John wanted to know his skills in case he needed them later)2.

He pulls them out and strikes a handful, watching them drop down, down into the lift, lighting the package, that bundle of raw material he'd so dutifully arranged. He draws the flask from his pocket and pours it out, watches the drops of water touch that little shiny block of stones beneath the burning paper before they begin to smoke. The fire edges towards the cans of petrol, snags at the plastic corners, melts them away, melts a hole into them...

"_Mikheia!_" He feels a hand grab his arm and drag him to the side of the garage, to the rushing of the water that pounds alongside the current his chest.

The star in his belly, the one he's swallowed that burns from the inside out, has escaped.

The garage is glowing and he feels like he knows what it is to touch the sun. He's running and it's all around him and it's hot, too hot, but John is there, beside him, so everything must be okay.

They are running away from the sun, tripping over stone walls, and he's falling in the air, down into the pulsing water. He feels himself smack the surface as it parts under his weight and he begins to sink.

He opens his eyes, John thrashing in the water beside him, slowly dropping down into the depths as trails of red float off him, washing away in the fast water. He grabs for John's descending hand, pulling at it with all his strength as John weakly kicks upwards. He's injured. Is Mikheia? He doesn't know, can't tell yet, has to come down first, has to stop the blood singing in his ears.

He breaks into the sweet air with a gasp, latching a hand under each of John's shoulders as he drags him to the surface. He can hear John's teeth chattering, he watches the colour leave his face, as if the water is washing away a layer of paint. He tightens his grip. Nothing, not the water, not the current, not death, will take this man out of his arms. Not if he has anything to say about it. He will save him, as surely as John has saved him before.

Above him, as the current carries them away through icy water, he can see the garage burning, a sun in the middle of the night, a fallen star brought down to earth. Its brothers twinkle in the night sky, like an audience watching from the balconies.

It's beautiful.

* * *

Notes:

**1. This is in Chapter 8 ("the bare heart") of 'Cicatrix', when John chases after Mikheia and gets a pole to the chest for his trouble.**

**2. This conversation happens in Chapter 17 ("affection and perfidy") of 'Eosophobia', when John talks with Mikheia in the hospital and embarks on his lovely emotional crisis (Which I guess is a metaphorical pole to the chest?).**

**Hopefully, this answers the question of where exactly Mikheia ran off to after John chased him through the factory.**

**TL;DR version:**  
**Five pounds of sodium metal is enough to generate a sizeable explosion (the doubtful can search Youtube for it).**

**Alternative Explanation for the Remaining Doubtful: Mikheia set the car park on fire with the power of his mind. Mikheia is the Human Torch.**


	9. night

Mycroft slides the compartment door open and politely waits for an elderly couple to pass by before he steps into the narrow hallway. Cigarette smoke lingers around the ceiling lights like moths to flame, the sweet warm smell of clove and tobacco lingering around the smoking passengers.

He glances both ways.

Soft snow glitters through the frosted windows as the rustic scenery passes by, the blinding glare shimmering against the whitewashed walls and glass windows of the cabins. Sherlock stands at the end of the hall, staring out into the blank canvas of wilderness as the cracked window spills cool air into the hall. An unlit cigarette dangles between his lips, of which he doesn't seem to have any intention of lighting as Mycroft steps towards him.

Wordlessly, Mycroft holds his lighter up, flame to tip. Sherlock makes no motion of thanks, silently inhaling as the ember begins to smoulder.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" He says as he stares out into the powdered, untouched distance. "Like a painter's canvas waiting for the brush—"

"What do you know about painting?" Sherlock scoffs, taking a shallow drag.

"Or a blank journal," Mycroft continues, drawing something from his jacket. "Waiting to be written in."

"That's not yours to have." Sherlock growls, attempting to snatch the journal from his brother, who pulls it out of his reach.

"And neither was it yours. You need to move on—"

"Move on?" Sherlock counters. "Move on, you tell me, as we track down what might be left of him. Move on, you say, as you let me linger where I am, in this abysmal state of hope and ignorance. Why don't you tell me something useful for once, instead of spouting insipid advice that you yourself haven't even heeded."

Sherlock then turns in a huff to eye the scenery, small towns smoking and peaceful in the distance, nestled in the arms of the quiet hills around them. A wave of hot envy passes through him for a moment, jealous of their simplicity. What did they know about pain? What did they know about the suffering of the world? He was sure, even as he thought this, that he was wrong. Someone down there must have suffered as he did, or else someone beside him.

He sucks on the cigarette as if it's an offering of air as he drowns. The ember burns.

"How far to Mostar?" He breathes, smoke trailing from his lips.

"About an hour."

"And the Commonwealth's still standing without you to head it?"

Mycroft sighs.

"Perhaps one day you'll accept the fact that I occupy a _minor_ position in the government…"

"Yes, and perhaps one day I'll retire to Essex and die of old age." Sherlock smirks mirthlessly, taking another drag of his cigarette.

"Not if you keep that habit up."

"It's tar-free." He grumbles. "Surely that must count for something."

"Here." Mycroft hands him the journal and he tries his best to not let his eagerness to have it back show as he takes it.

"What is this?" He asks, pulling two billets from the pages of the journal.

"Me doing something _useful_." Mycroft responds. "You think it's impossible to find Moran and his accomplice once we arrive in Mostar. You are, I regret to say, incorrect. It's incredibly possible that we will find them, and perhaps John too if we're lucky. Mostar is not London. It's not even Sarajevo. It is, for all intents and purposes, a small city and, fortunately for us, there are only two ways to get there: bus and train. We'll be using both, and, as these travel methods are both currently under my surveillance, so, I assume, will our two runaways."

"And once we get there? How are we going to find her, or Moran?"

"Sherlock," Mycroft's laugh edges into patronising. "I doubt that your Irregulars' reach extends this far."

Sherlock grins smugly. "Actually, they do."

"Can you trust them?"

"You can trust anyone if you're the one paying them the most."

"You know what I mean."

"I believe I can."

Mycroft shuffles on his feet, warily eyeing his brother.

"Perhaps this is an impertinent question, but you never paid Mikheia for his services, did you?"

Sherlock takes a long drag and savours it for a moment before he exhales.

"No, not fully, but his mother and sister won't lack for anything. Have they been notified?"

"They will be…once we find a body that matches his records." Mycroft says solemnly and watches Sherlock's movements freeze. "Sherlock, we will have to consider the fact that John, if he is out there, might not be alone."

"I believe it's foolish to hope that they both survived."

"Look at the facts, brother mine, and then allow yourself to hope. One body was found."

"I know Moran is alive, so whoever it is can't be good. That one body could be either of them."

"Or it could be neither. You said there were other people there that night."

Sherlock seems to take this into consideration, puffing away silently at what remains of his cigarette.

"That day in the hotel…the day after." He begins softly. "Someone tried to kill me, and was assassinated in the attempt."

"Yes, I remember."

Mycroft waits for his brother to elucidate his unfinished thought, but Sherlock merely falls back into contemplative silence.

"The river's quite beautiful. We'll follow it all the way to Mostar." Mycroft says as the Nerevta River passes under the bridge, emerald and sapphire stretching under the sun. "Such a lovely shade."

The hall is plunged into darkness as the train passes through a tunnel.

"Were you expecting me to say it was the same colour as his eyes?" Sherlock says coolly.

"No. I think you'd rather cut out your tongue than say a line like that."

"You're right." Sherlock murmurs, before flicking his spent cigarette out the window, the burning ember disappearing into the dark. "His eyes were much bluer."

The train exits the tunnel and Mycroft is blinded momentarily by the shining light reflected off the snow.

Sherlock is gone.

* * *

John watches as Mikheia converses with the old man at the mouth of the barn, smiling and joking as he takes an old oil lamp and a covered tray from him. Goats bleat in the distance, the land quiet as it gets ready for bed.

"Who is he?" John asks, grimacing in pain as he moves to sit up against the hay, the bandages tight around his ribs.

Mikheia moves around him, setting the tray at his feet as he sits across from him, uncovering it to reveal a loaf of bread and two bowls of stew.

"His name is Georgiy." He says, breaking the loaf in half with a crunch and handing part to John. "He lives with his dog Sasha, and otherwise alone. His wife died a few years ago and his sons and daughter live in Mostar, so he tends the farm alone. He helped me pull you out of the river, and not too soon at that either. He saved our lives."

"And he doesn't mind us imposing?"

"Imposing?" Mikheia repeats with a frown.

"Eating his food, living on his land, using his supplies..."

"I think he is just happy for the company. He said you can rest in his home, once you are ready to be moved."

"He has a guest room?"

"No. You would be in his bed. He says he has enough blankets to make him and myself a cot of sorts. It would be better than the dirt, at any rate."

"That's…incredibly generous thing for him to do, for a stranger."

"I try to help him when I can, so it is not all just his generosity, although he did not ask me to. And besides, we—he and I, that is— owe a lot to strangers." Mikehia says reflectively as he tears his bread. "We all were, when we were being bombed and killed. In school I read about another city, Leningrad. Everyone there ate each other. Sarajevo—if you will let me pretend to be a poet for a moment—we survived, together. If I were to see another Sarajevan in the street in Novgorod, I would greet them with a smile, not spit at their feet, as too many others have."

"Is that why you're so keen on helping me?" John asks with a teasing grin.

"Perhaps. But you sir, you are no stranger. We are friends. Friends help each other."

"I'm so glad you dropped robbing tourists. You'd have the shirt off my back if you didn't."

"I might not have robbed you then, and I will not do so now."

"'Might not'?"

"_Probably_ not." Mikheia amends. "Most likely would not. You can be a very intimidating man, when you choose to be. You like to protect people, like me. Maybe that is why I like you. Maybe that is why Sherlock loves you."

John buries his face him his hands, grinding his palms against his eyes.

"God…I can't believe I left him alone."

"You did not leave him. You had no choice. You saved him."

"I died to save him." John murmurs with an unhappy laugh. "Christ, I did this to him. He's never going to believe this. He's never going to forgive me."

"Why not?" Mikheia frowns, popping a piece of bread in his mouth.

"Because he did this to me, and I didn't think I'd ever forgive him once I found out he was alive."

"Did you?"

"Yes. Eventually. Of course I did."

"Then I am sure he will understand. You gave him this courtesy, and he will repay it, once you find each other again."

"You think we will?"

"I am not blind, sir. I have seen the two of you together. You will find each other." Mikheia says solemnly before he slowly puts down his empty plate and notices that John's is still half-full. "Do you miss him?"

John says nothing for a moment.

"Yeah." He murmurs. "More than anything…most of all."

"In a few days you will be as best as new. We can find him then. Until then, eat your food. You need your strength."

"He thinks we're dead." John whispers hoarsely. "If he hasn't already…his brother will want to take him somewhere safe, if he can manage it."

"He will wait for you, like you did for him. I am sure of it. He is a smart man, he will figure out the truth."

John stares up through the broken roof, into the night.

"I hope he does."

* * *

_**A brief reminder: John and Mikheia's scenes take place around 2 months **__**before**__** Sherlock and Mycroft head to Mostar.**_


	10. what matters

Birds caw over the whitewashed landscape, dismally searching for their brethren amid the stripped, bare trees, like dark ribcages unfolded and flayed against the silent horizon.

Mud spattered boots crunch over permafrost and mud, joined by four furry paws. A light cheery whistle sounds out over the quiet land, carrying out to mingle with the baying of farm animals and the tinkle of the bells around their necks. The crunching stops, the boots stilling. The dog's collar settles.

Mikheia smiles as he stares out into the distance. He stares into the cold, still hills, and wonders if this land has always planned for him to come back; if it's always waited for him, like this.

A month they've been here. A month, and he's already sunken into this land as if he's lived there for decades. In the dark, blind compartments deep beneath his chest, part of him wishes John would stay injured for just a little while longer. That's all he wants. More time here.

He takes a deep breath of frigid air and continues on, humming as he picks up stray pieces of wood and shaking the snow off. Sasha trots happily beside him, glancing up curiously as he hums.

"You want to sing with me?" Mikheia smiles before his humming ascends into lyrics. "'There near the Sava, _Save i Danube'_…something…_so_mething _some_thing. Eh, you know how it goes…" He pats Sasha on the head before striding to a grove of trees to reach into their innards and pick dry branches. The dog barks, padding up to him with a stick in his mouth. "What good is finding dry wood if you've gotten slobber all over it?" He asks, pulling the stick from Sasha's mouth and tossing it, watching as he bounds across the snow after it, disappearing into the small grove of walnut trees.

Smoke begins to trickle out of Georgiy's red brick chimney, which looks ready to topple over at its mere presence. Mikheia's stomach growls at the sight. Usually, they've been subsiding off slightly burnt bread and watery soup from the leftover vegetables in Georgiy's garden, but on Sundays Georgiy heads down to the main square to haggle and beat down the vendors for their wares, striding back proudly with his bounty; links of smoked meat, blocks of yellow sheep milk cheese, a loaf of salted black bread the size of Sasha's body with herbs baked into it, and even a cask of wine if he could manage it. Mikheia was already salivating. His step quickened as he headed towards the house, hoping he'd get to break the bread first; he loved the satisfying, crunching sound as his fingers burrowed into the soft warmth. Maybe if Georgiy was feeling amenable he'd bring out the bottle of rakija that Mikheia most certainly hadn't found under that loose floorboard while sweeping the other day.

As he leans against the old whitewashed wood of the back door to take off his boots, Sasha trots back to him, wagging his tail as he offers his prize in his mouth to Mikheia: a red apple.

Mikheia pauses, standing in the cold with one socked foot. How odd. Georgiy doesn't grow apple trees on his farm.

"Sasha, _daju_." He kneels and holds out his hand as the dog drops it into his palm. Under the dirt and slobber, he can feel grooves so he grabs a fistful of melting snow and rubs it over the abandoned fruit until the red shines through. Someone's carved something into the face.

"I.O.U?" Mikheia frowns as he reads. He looks suspiciously at Sasha. "You didn't tell me you could write."

Sasha says nothing, smiling and panting in the cold air.

Mikheia straightens up, looking around the frozen yard. He moves to pull on his discarded boot and head into the walnut groves, when he hears Georgiy call his name.

_"Dolazak_." He calls, giving the grove one last glance before pulling off his boots and stepping inside.

* * *

John pants in pain as Georgiy helps him sit up, sweat beading at his brow. His whole body feels as if it's been speared through with a rusted knife that's twisted and lodged in the length of his spine. He'd hit the water harder than he remembers, or at least that's what Mikheia tells him.

Bitter thoughts begin to clog his brain, muting the sphere of logic as if it was smothered by a burlap-swathed pillow.

Of course as he tried to shield Mikheia from the water he'd nearly drowned (_wonderful_), broken three ribs (_fantastic_), dislocated a shoulder (_naturally_), sliced himself into ribbons during the river run (_brilliant_), and lost Sherlock (_inexcusable_), so despite everything he'd done, despite the fact that he'd been trying to save him, he'd _lost_ the only person that mattered. If he could just heal faster, if he hadn't been so slow, if Mikheia hadn't been there, he could've put a bullet in Moran's head and that'd be that, he'd be with Sherlock, he could be in Baker Street, sipping tea and typing and sighing after Sherlock blew up an experiment all over the kitchen and cleaning him off and taking him to bed, a thousand things, what might have been, that's the worst hell isn't it, _what might have been_—

Georgiy slips an arm under John's shoulders, slowly raising him into a sitting position, feet coming to rest on the coarse, cold wood floor as it jolts John back into the present and out of his blackened thoughts.

No. He shouldn't think that way. It's just the pain talking, the physical exhaustion as his body healed itself. This wasn't him. He owed so much to Mikheia, for helping him, for saving his life, for being here. Sherlock was not the only person that mattered, he was simply the one that mattered most.

Mikheia appears in the doorway, flushed from the sudden heat of the house as he shrugs off his jacket— Georgiy's hand-me-down—to help John stand. As his hand closes around John's arm, he jolts.

"Cold."

"Sorry, sir." Mikheia smiles apologetically.

_They saved my life, they take care of me, and I owe so much to them. They matter, too. Georgiy gave me his bed, Mikheia picked wood out of an open wound, Georgiy cooks for three when he can afford one, Mikheia redresses my bandages every night and morning; they matter, too. Of course they matter, too._

As John wobbles on his feet, Georgiy says something to Mikheia.

"_Da_." Mikheia replies. "_Tukli ih u njihovoj sopstvenoj igri. Zabavite_."

Georgiy waves before picking up Mikheia's coat and shrugging it on, donning his cap and grabbing his wicker basket, hauling it over his shoulder as he leaves to go into town.

Mikheia stretches, yawning as he shakes out the stiff coldness before heading into the den. John shuffles after him.

Georgiy's home, a small cottage he and his late wife built with their own hands, is an idyllic pastoral, like it was pulled straight out of a Dostoevsky novel, comprised of just three rooms: a den and intermingling kitchen, and a bedroom. Thick exposed coarse wood beams trap the heat floating to the ceiling, while rough stone floors and inner walls add to the feeling John had the moment he'd first stepped in, namely that he'd been thrown back a century in time, although Georgiy's access to running water assuaged it a bit. Combined with the rolling lush mountains in the distance and the semi-isolated close intimacy of farm life, in another life perhaps, would have suited John quite comfortably. If—_when—_he found Sherlock again, it'd be a nice place to retire to.

"Did you sleep well, sir?" Mikheia asks as he kneels over the bricked hearth, carefully lifting the lid of a metal pitcher of raw milk before wrapping a towel around his hand and hurriedly crossing to the sink as he submerses it in cold water. John turns the memory of teaching him a rushed form of pasteurisation over and a smile tugs at his face. The black mood has passed, and now he stands in a comfy home with a good friend and he is a little bit less lonely than he was before. Small things, he supposes.

"It was nice, thanks. Are you surviving on the floor?"

Mikheia shrugs, turning to lean against the sink. Steam curls against the morning light, giving him a smoking outline. "I am used to sleeping by fires. Truths be told, I missed it a little during our adventures."

He takes the towel again and unhooks the old metal coffeepot from where it dangles over the fire. As he moves, John hobbles to the cabinets and with a great stiffness manages to grab three mugs and set them on the table.

"You should not be stressing your wounds, sir."

"Mikheia, please, _John_."

"You should not be stressing your wounds, _John_." Mikheia draws out the name, helping John sit in his chair.

"I feel like a bloody invalid."

"It is better than being dead." Mikheia answers solemnly, pouring their cups before grabbing the pitcher from the sink and setting it on the table. John begins to reach for the milk and grits his teeth at the strain but Mikheia bats his hand away like a mother keeping her child from sweets and sets it down in front of him.

"You had nightmares last night." Mikheia says carefully. John takes a slow sip of coffee, if only to prolong talking about it. "What were they about?"

"Sherlock." He admits quietly. "They're always about Sherlock."

"Would you like to talk about it?"

John shuts his eyes. "Not yet. Maybe later."

Mikheia nods, and lets the conversation settle between them like disturbed river silt.

"How long do you think it will be taking for you to heal?"

"A couple more days, looks like. I want to be out of here soon. I feel like I'm going mad."

"I think one gets more restless the more they want to be somewhere else. Everything, it is happening where you are not and you would like to be there."

John is silent for a moment before he speaks quietly.

"I need to find him, Mikheia."

"Yes. I do as well."

"Before I went to sleep last night, I thought about him. Well, I mean, that's not _new_, but I thought about what he's doing right now. Where he is. If he's—Sherlock's always been the rash type."

"I think that for someone who thinks so much, he goes too far and burns his brain sometimes."

"I don't want him to have done anything…_rash_ because I'm not there."

"You said his brother was with him?"

"Yeah," John responds, setting down his cup. "He should be."

"Family protects family. They do not cut off a broken limb. They help it. His brother will take care of him."

"That's what I'm afraid of." John answers, and Mikheia frowns. "Sherlock doesn't like to owe him anything—"

"I.O.U." Mikheia pipes in.

John whips his head to look at him, sitting up in his seat.

"What did you say?"

"I.O.U. What does this mean?"

"It's a…a way of saying someone owes you a favour. Why? Where'd you hear it?"

"It was on an apple that Sasha brought me."

"An apple?" John pales.

"Yes, see, I think this is being most weird because Georgiy does not grow apples here—Sir? What is it?"

John has stood abruptly, rushing to check out of the windows to look into the dark groves ahead. "That man in Sarajevo—"

"Moran."

"Yes. That was his boss' calling card. No one else I've ever met has done that. It's got to be him. He must have survived…"

"But…the garage, it was a supernova, _we_ barely escaped, how could he have gotten away?"

"Do I look like I know?" John snaps, before he reminds himself to lower his hackles. "Sorry, I just…Mikheia, if this man is alive, we're not only in danger—"

"Georgiy and Sherlock are too." Mikheia finishes, and John nods solemnly. "What will we do? We cannot explode another garage, there are not any around."

"That's the thing, Mikheia. Moran is a man. We don't need a garage to kill him."

"What are you to suggest, then?"

"We have to search the grounds first, see if we can find anything."

"And if we find him?"

"We kill him."

"And if he finds us?"

John stares into the cold yard for a moment.

"I have an idea, but you're not going to like it."


	11. noose

The cottage was quiet but for the crackling and popping of the fire and the clink of silverware. Soft light stained the wooden floor, seeping out past the windows into the foggy night, its fingers unable to touch the face of the walnut grove, which lay burrowed in wet wind and dampness.

All three men, nestled in their creaky chairs at a well-worn table, were silent as they ate. They had nothing to say, and no wherewithal to speak if they had. Georgiy kept glancing out the window to the darkness where his barn waited, and the rolling fog that trickled through the trees like one would draw their hand through a lover's hair. John always noticed. Mikheia scratched at his collarbone.

Afterwards, Mikheia clears the plates as John redresses his wounds—he had, of late, thankfully gained most of his mobility back—, wrapping gauze around raw but healing skin. Georgiy wordlessly darts around, helping Mikheia with the dishes and holding a bandage for John when it's necessary, before he bundles himself up and heads out to the barn to lock up the animals.

John is just fastening the pin in his bandages when Georgiy returns, shedding his outer layers quickly in the smoky heat of the cottage. As John watches, he slowly kneels down on the floor in front of the fireplace and takes out a pocketknife, loosening a rattling floorboard and setting it aside. He reaches down until his arm disappears and comes up with a dusty dark bottle, thoroughly examined by Sasha's wet busy nose as he raises himself back up and replaces the floorboard.

"Rakija." He says, placing it on the table in front of John. "_Grožđa_."

Mikheia glances back as he wipes his hands on a towel. "That is rakija, sir," he says, motioning to the bottle. He takes a place next to John as Georgiy works the cork open. "Grape, according to Georgiy. It is like wine? But not wine. Nor vodka either. It is, um, traditional drink used for big occasions if you cannot have it at every meal. Weddings, baptisms, deaths…at a funeral you are supposed to leave a bottle for the dead, or if you cannot bear to part with it, you pour some over the grave."

Georgiy hands them each a grappa glass and sits on John's other side as he pours them each a portion of a clear liquid.

"_Život_." He toasts, glass in hand.

"_Život_." John and Mikheia repeat. John has no idea what he's saying, but with everything Georgiy has agreed to so far, he will toast to whatever he wants. All three tip the drink back and John is hit with a taste not dissimilar to wine that soon mellows out to a rich, smoky, smooth taste.

"That's…that's delicious."

Georgiy nods and refills his glass. "Friend, he make."

John smiles as Mikheia hands him the bottle. Georgiy had been infected with an almost childlike curiosity for the English language, asking John every morning for a new word or phrase, although he quickly learned to wait until after he changed the bandages to learn anything other than profanity.

_Morning sunlight trickled into the room. John lifted his arms tentatively as Georgiy wrapped another length of gauze around John's torso; Mikheia watched silently as he leaned against the door. John's side protested, though not as loudly as before. He still couldn't stretch his arm too far, and turning from side to side was meddlesome, but he was grateful he could actually do it, whereas before both were near impossible. He glances down as his fingers fumble around the edges of the tape, catching the large red gashes bolded against his ribs. There would be scars now, there was no helping it, but that wasn't the problem. He'd survive, for beauty wasn't the issue here, and even if it was, he would only want one person to see them anyways._

_"'Prijatelj'?" Georgiy asked, fastening the edge of the gauze with a pin._

_"He wants to know how to say 'friend'." Mikheia replied from the doorway._

_Over lunch, as they tore through a loaf of bread, Georgiy sipped his coffee, which had the tang of battery acid—John knew well, as he had braved it once and only once—and looked from John to Mikheia as they talked._

"'_Dom'?" He asked._

_"'Home', this time." Mikheia translated, before popping a piece of bread into his mouth._

_As the three trudged through the walnut groves, gathering all in arm's reach and leaving John to pick stray shells off the ground, Georgiy stopped, wiping his brow as he stared into the foothills._

_"'Zbogom'?" The old man asked, his eyes full of mountains and brimming with sky._

_Mikheia didn't answer immediately. Instead, he knelt down and brushed off a browning red apple before wordlessly handing it to John, who turned it over in his palm, already knowing what he'd see._

_I.O.U._

_The third one this week. Three apples. Three warnings._

_John looked at Georgiy, whose gaze was still lost in the distance. Mikheia spoke._

_"He wants to know how to say 'goodbye'."_

John stares at Georgiy from across the table, who is sipping his drink and looking at the room with an expression John is familiar with; he's remembering as much as he can, storing it to feed off of later. John would know. He did it with Sherlock's room before he packed up his stuff and tried his best not to go past that threshold ever again. It was selfish. It was self-preservation.

"Thank you." He says, more to Georgiy than to Mikheia, who is topping off the old man's glass as he translates. "I mean it. You've…you've been absolutely wonderful, and so kind and generous. You've given me a lot more than I deserved."

Georgiy ignores his fresh drink and reaches a hand across the table, taking John's in his tanned, warm palm as he speaks.

"_Moja supruga me je zamolio da bude dobar čovjek._"

"My wife asked me to be a good man—"

"_To nije teško biti sretan kad si dobar. Kada ste sretni, ja sam sretan, jer sam vam dao osmijeh._ "

"It's not hard to be happy when you're good. When you're happy, I am happy because I gave you your smile."

A grin comes to John's face, mirrored by the old man across the table.

"_Vidiš?_" Georgiy says, gesturing with his hands. "_Sretan sam_."

"See?" Mikheia echoes. "I am happy."

Georgiy settles back in his chair and drains his glass in one go, but refuses a refill from Mikheia. He and John, already light-headed and fuzzy, deign to do the same, both out of politeness and necessity. They had to be clear-headed tonight if they wanted to live to see the morning.

The room settles into the content silence that good food and alcohol typically brings, the fire crackling in the hearth as Sasha gnaws on a grizzled piece of scrap at Georgiy's feet.

"_To me čini srećnim što ste ovde_." Georgiy says suddenly.

"He says that he is glad he met the two of us."

"Really?" John says with a chuckle, finding it more than a little hard to believe. "Ask him if he's sure."

Mikheia presumably does just that and Georgiy laughs before replying. Mikheia pauses a moment, sparing a long glance at the man before turning to John.

"He says we have been the most exciting thing to have ever happened to him."

"Well, I don't know if I'd call us exciting."

"You have not seen what he sees, what I see." Mikheia replies, sipping at his drink. "I know you never met me officially in Novgorod, but my life was just as exciting as I thought it would ever be; I did menial work and robbed tourists to buy my bread. I think I was just waiting to be arrested or murdered. Maybe I wanted something that meant freedom. I wanted something…so that I could live a little, on my own. I did not care what it was…"

He stops as Georgiy stands and retires to his room, bidding them a good night.

"Compared to petty theft and menial labour, I think anything would be more exciting." John teases.

"In my wildest of dreams, I could never have imagined the two of you, and the life you have tied around your necks." Mikheia says quietly.

"Why is it around our necks?" John asks, taking a small swig of the rakija.

"It is your noose. It tightens when you are in danger, makes you aware that it is there, that is something in you that you can lose. When you are safe, when you can breathe again, you forget that it was ever there, until it pulls at you again. I do not know it was an object for trade until I met you and your Sherlock."

John's brow furrows. "How do you mean?"

"You have his rope in your hand, and his is in yours. You feel strangled when he is in danger, and so he does for you. You have traded, see. Mine? Mine is still in my hand, where it started. When I am in peril, only I tighten it. Only I care what happens to me."

"Sherlock cares what happens to you." John corrects. "_I_ care what happens to you. Friends don't let other friends tighten their own nooses."

Mikheia closes his eyes and smiles ruefully.

"I do not think you have a choice."

* * *

They sit across from each other in the dining chairs they dragged before the fire, alone in a house with a penchant for quiet. It's almost midnight. The fog is creeping towards the house, the warm fire not strong enough to ward it away. In the back of the yard, the barn glows with a soft light, mingling with the shadows inside.

Sasha sits between them, offering the familiar comfort a loyal animal brings, even as he twitches in his sleep.

"Mikheia," John begins, his voice rising in the quiet. "Did you really tell him what I said?"

The other stirs his water innocently. "What do you mean, sir?"

"When I thanked Georgiy for all he's done. His reaction had almost nothing to do with what I really said."

"I told him…mostly all." Mikheia answers as he pulls his legs to his chest and stares into the fire.

"And…why mostly?"

"Because you were not telling truths, a little."

John frowns, bemused. If anyone could call someone else a liar as politely and inoffensively as possible, it was Mikheia. Of course.

"What, may I ask, do you think I was lying about?"

Mikheia says nothing, absentmindedly running a finger along the rim of his cup.

"Mikheia…"

"You said 'you have given me a lot more than I deserved'." Mikheia quotes.

"I did, yes." John nods. "What about it?"

Silence.

"Mikheia, look at me."

Mikheia turns to him and John startles at his expression, his eyes full of something deep and heavy and mournful, the look an old man gives to someone he's about to lecture on the wicked, cruel ways of the world. The look of an ancient knowledge of someone who's had to learn what they know through a burdened, terrible suffering.

"That was the lie, sir." He answers softly. "You deserve his kindness as absolutely as you do the next breath you take or the next time your heart beats." Mikheia unfolds his legs and leans towards John, the knowledge in his eyes turning to soft entreaty. "You are a good man, John Watson. You are, but for some reason you think you are not. You think you betrayed Sherlock by exploding that car park. You saved his life, and yours, and mine. You miss him, and I do too, but that is a bit like comparing a passing cloud of shade to an eclipse, yes? But you miss him, and you feel guilty, and you feel that you are to blame for everything that has happened." Mikheia put his hand gently on John's shoulder. "You are _good_, sir. You must know this. You must know that loneliness does not make you a bad person."

"I don't think I'm a bad person, Mikheia, and God knows I've seen my pick of bad people, it's just…just…"

"You can tell me, sir."

It is John's turn to say nothing. He swallows, shutting his eyes against the receding tide of a buzzed inebriation.

"You can tell me, John."

John smiles ruefully at the sound of his name. Tomorrow, if they make it there, he can say that it was the wine, if he wanted the easy way out.

"Sometimes I wish Georgiy had never pulled me out of that river." John admits quietly. "I wish you hadn't saved my life."

Mikheia recoils, frowning.

"Why? Why do you wish death over finding Sherlock? You are in love with him, yes?"

"Yes, of course I am—"

"Then what is the problem, I am wondering? I think the rakija has gone to your brain…" Mikheia reaches forward and snatches the water from out of John's hands. "You are needing more of this, perhaps. You dry-brained loon."

John has to push down the oncoming smile at Mikheia's choice of words, instead choosing to jump into the cold pool headfirst.

"I—you know, since the car park, some days, when I feel very…dark, my black moods—and maybe it's from my injury, maybe it's some kind of PTSD recurrence, I couldn't bloody care why, because it doesn't change the fact that it happens— I feel…empty. I feel like I've failed everyone, you, Georgiy, Sherlock, my friends back home, everyone I've ever met. I feel like I'm a burden. A disappointment. And…I think, maybe some people would have been better off without that."

Mikheia stands in front of him with a wild expression for a moment, as if he can't believe what he's hearing, and sets down John's glass a little more forcefully than he should have, sloshing water onto the end table. His eyes are bright as he leans forward.

"Do you know what_ I _was 'back home'?" He asks, and John damn near shrinks back at the darkness in his eyes. "I was a shade. I was waiting to die or sign my life away to something I thought I wanted; I think Sherlock saw a little of himself, or who he used to be, in me and I saw myself in him. When two shades look at each other, it is hard not to recognize that look in the other's eyes for what it really is: boredom. I wanted something exciting. Something to believe in. I am telling you now, I believe in you, John, and I believe in Sherlock. I believe in what you do, that you have seen so many ugly things in this world and yet you still try to fight them, still try to, to…_ubiti zvijer_. Slay the beast. I know this world, I have been hurt by it as you have, and more than just the scars on our shoulders or the bullets inside us. Our being here is a hydra, a many-headed monster. We think we win, and we do not. We think everything is over, and the world still turns. You must fight this as you would anything else. You are not alone. You have me. And I am not alone, for I have you. A hydra surely cannot survive two swords in its neck at once, yes? And once we find Sherlock, we will have three, and your beast will be dead."

John is speechless. Mikheia seems to come back to himself and awkwardly fumbles for the water, taking a large gulp to fill the silence.

"Mikheia, I—"

He stops as twin gunshots echo nearby, cracking through the night's quiet like lightning. He and Mikheia stare towards the barn, where the shots sounded.

Mikheia holds out a hand and John takes it, standing a bit stiffly. He smiles.

"It is time to face our monsters, John."

* * *

_People don't think monsters exist. I know, beyond every reasonable doubt, that they do. I've seen them._

Sherlock lies on the plush hotel bed, John's journal open in his hands. He's rereading one of his favourite entries, in a room in the third most expensive hotel in Mostar that Mycroft could find. Something about not calling attention to themselves. In Sherlock's opinion, he's too impatient and Mycroft is too well-dressed to go unnoticed.

_Most people are afraid of the dark. Of what it hides. Even soldiers. Especially soldiers, because we know what lurks inside it. We know that we should fear it, and why._

Mycroft doesn't understand why he holds the journal tightly if he so much as glances at it. Why Sherlock always keeps it close to him. He'd be a fool to let Mycroft take it away again. He'll never tell him the real reason why he's so…protective of this ratty little notebook, all worn leather and binding coming unstuck. If this journey leads nowhere, if John is really nothing more than ashes, then this is truly all he has left. This, and the ghosts. The thousand Johns that linger around their flat—and it will always be their flat, just as Sherlock will always be John's and he will always be Sherlock's—the ones that make a hundred cups of tea in a hundred different ways, the ones that read a different book every minute in John's chair, the ones that make that tsk in the back of their throat as they clean up a hundred spilled liquids of a hundred experiments. All of his memories. All of his ghosts. They only leave when he shuts his eyes, or finds alternative solutions, and they're right there again when he wakes, or when he comes back down so hard he crashes to earth and only wants to shoot straight back up again if it means he won't hurt, or be aware that he does.

_There are monsters in the dark. Always. Just waiting. In the desert, your convoy is asleep and you're looking at the stars. You think you're alone. You're not. When you get up to piss and there's a sand spider on your boot, you're not alone. When something moves in the dark and you have to decide whether it's an ambush or someone shifting in their sleep, you're not alone. During the day, you look at the foothills. Are those heat waves or movement? You're not sure, but you're not alone._

Three days before, and less than a hundred miles away, two figures quietly enter the cold, dark night, wrapped in fog, and head towards a dilapidated, decaying barn. Lights flicker from inside. A shadow looms before the windows, staining the damp grass.

_The monsters will always wait in the dark. And you are never alone._

John and Mikheia look to each other as they pause outside of the barn.

_Remember when I used to think there was a monster hiding under my bed? I thought it was protecting me from all the beasts that prowled the streets at night, waiting to swallow a kid like me up and spit my bones out. I'd leave a piece of bread out for it every night until Mum caught on. She asked me why I was feeding the monster under my bed. I said I didn't want it to starve. I said I didn't want it to be lonely. I don't want to feed the monsters in the night anymore._

The bathroom door shuts in Sherlock's room and his eyes flicker to Mycroft before he continues to read, ignorant of the events three days prior.

_Not when I don't know what they are. Not when I've got my own to starve._

Mikheia looks to John. The door to the barn is already cracked open. There are twin holes, fresh, burned through the cracked glass. With a nod from John, Mikheia reaches to open the door.

_I'm not afraid of the dark anymore. I'm afraid of what's inside it._


End file.
